“I think he would.  I am a burthen to them now.  They cannot feel my grief, nor comfort it, and they don’t like the sight of it, though I am sure I trouble them with it as little as possible.”

“Dear Cecil!” and the ready tears welled up in Rosamond’s gray eyes.

“I don’t want to talk of it,” said Cecil.  “If I felt worthy to grieve it would be less dreadful; but it all seems like hypocrisy.  Rosamond, if you were to lose Julius to-morrow, you would not be as unhappy as I am.”

“Don’t, don’t!” cried Rosamond, making a gesture of horror.  “But does not coming here make it worse?”

“No, real stabs are better than dull aching; and then you—­you, Rosamond, did know how it really was, and that I would—­I would—­”

Cecil wept now as Rosamond had longed to see her weep when she had left Compton, and Rosamond spoke from her tender heart of comfort; but the outburst did not last long, and Cecil said, recovering herself—­

“After all, my most peaceful times of late have been in walking about in those woods at Sirenwood; I should like to live there.  You know he always wished it to be the purchase, because it joins Compton, and I should like to get it all into perfect order and beauty, and leave it all to little Raymond.”

“I should have thought the place would have been full of ghosts.”

“I tried.  I made the woman let me in, and I sat where poor Camilla used to talk to me, and I thought I was the better for facing it out.  The question is whether Mrs. Poynsett will dislike it.  She has a right to be consulted.”

Perhaps Cecil could not be gracious.  Certainly, Raymond would have been thankful for even this admission.

“You wish me to find out?”

“If you would be so good.  I would give it up at once if she has any feeling against it, and go somewhere else—­and of course she has!  She never can forget what I did!”

Rosamond caressed Cecil with that sweetness which saw everything in the most consoling manner; but when the poor young widow was out of sight, there was a revulsion of feeling.

“No, Mrs Poynsett must always feel that that wretched marriage broke her son’s heart, and murdered him!—­murdered him!” said Rosamond to herself, clenching that soft fist of hers.  “It ought not to be broached to her!”

But Julius—­when she stated it to him rather less broadly, but still saying that she did not know whether she could bear the sight of Cecil, except when she was before her eyes, and how could his mother endure her at all—­did not see it in the same light.  He thought Sirenwood gave duties to Cecil, and that she ought not to be hindered from fulfilling them.  And he said his mother was a large-minded woman, and not likely to have that personal bitterness towards Cecil that both the ladies seemed to expect, as her rival in her son’s affections, and the means of his unhappiness and death.