But Cicely only laughed, and her feather made defiant nods and flourishes all the way downstairs.

‘Come along Marsworth, my boy,’ said Farrell when the good-byes were said, and Hester stood watching their departure, while Cicely chattered from the motor, where she sat wrapped in furs against a rising east wind.  ‘Outside—­or inside?’ He pointed to the car.

‘Outside, thank you,’ said Marsworth, with decision.  He promptly took his place beside the chauffeur, and Farrell and his sister were left to each other’s company.  Farrell had seldom known his companion more cross and provoking than she was during the long motor ride home; and on their arrival at Carton she jumped out of the car, and with barely a nod to Marsworth, vanished into the house.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Nelly had let Hester install her on the Carton couch, and lay there well shawled, beside the window, her delicate face turned to the lake and the mountains.  Bridget was unpacking, and Hester was just departing to her own house.  Nelly could hardly let her go.  For a month now, Hester had been with her at Torquay, while Bridget was pursuing some fresh ‘work’ in London.  And Nelly’s desolate heart had found both calm and bracing in Hester’s tenderness.  For the plain shapeless spinster was one of those rare beings who in the Lampadephoria of life, hand on the Lamp of Love, pure and undefiled, as they received it from men and women, like themselves, now dead.

But Hester went at last, and Nelly was alone.  The lake lay steeped in a rich twilight, into which the stars were rising.  The purple breast of Silver How across the water breathed of shelter, of rest, of things ineffable.  Nelly’s eyes were full of tears, and her hands clasped on her breast scarcely kept down the sobbing.  There, under the hands, was the letter which George had written to her, the night before he left her.  She had been told of its existence within a few days of his disappearance; and though she longed for it, a stubborn instinct had bade her refuse to have it, refuse to open it.  ’No!—­I was only to open it, if George was dead.  And he is not dead!’ And as time went on, it had seemed to her for months, as if to open it, would be in some mysterious way to seal his fate.  But at last she had sent for it—­at last she had read it—­with bitter tears.

She would wear no black for him—­her lost lover.  She told herself to hope still.  But she was, in truth, beginning to despair.  And into her veins, all unconsciously, as into those of the old brown earth, the tides of youth, the will to live, were slowly, slowly, surging back.

CHAPTER X

‘You have gone far enough,’ said Cicely imperiously.  ’I am going to take you home.’