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"HENRY, if we walk up and down the drive, no one need see us from the village; though, after all, now that it's all over . . . one must take up one's ordinary life again sooner or later, and dear Esmée herself would wish one to be brave. Besides, I want to talk to you, and since poor Louis is again shut up in the study, and I have persuaded Zella to lie down, we may as well get some fresh air before it grows dark."

"Come along," said Henry Lloyd-Evans thankfully.

He was a tall, melancholy-looking man, who had been depressed and uncomfortable all day, and was heartily relieved to get out of the house of mourning.

"First of all," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, taking her husband's arm, "how did you leave the children ?"

"All right. They were going to bicycle to Redhill this afternoon, and have tea in the woods."

"Henry dear, I don't think you should have allowed that. The servants will think it so odd. You may be sure they know perfectly well that the funeral was to-day. If Miss Vincent had been there, she would not have allowed such a thing, and the children must have known that perfectly well. It was very naughty and artful of them."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans often suspected other people of artfulness, and it was a continual distress to her that she so frequently discovered traces of it in her own children.

"Muriel asked me if it would be all right, and I said yes; it really didn't seem to matter, so far away, and you couldn't expect the poor kids to stick indoors on a fine day like this," said her husband apologetically.

"Of course not, Henry—I am not so unreasonable as to expect anything of the kind; but they could quite well have stayed in the garden, and I think it showed great callousness to have gone tearing about the country on bicycles while their aunt, my only sister_: "Mrs. Lloyd-Evans showed a tendency to become tearful.

"My dear," protested Henry, "I don't suppose they can even remember your poor sister."

"Nonsense! James was eight and Muriel nearly seven last time they stayed here. And little Zella has always been like a sister to them."

A sister with whom they had quarrelled so violently that Zella's last visit to the Lloyd-Evans's, two years ago, had been brought to an untimely end at her own request. Henry remembered the occurrence grimly, and how quietly voluble his wife had been upon the subject of Zella's deplorable upbringing, which she had stigmatized in one breath as foreign, pagan, and new-fangled.

But he had long ago learnt the futility of arguing against his Marianne's discursive inconsequence and gentle obstinacy, and he was at all times a man who preferred silence to speech.

"I wanted to ask you about Zella," continued Mrs. Lloyd-Evans—" whether it wouldn't be a good idea to take the poor little thing back with us on Saturday. It will cheer her up to be with companions of her own age, and the change will do her good. I don't know what poor Louis is going to do with her, I'm sure."

"To do with her ?" echoed Henry uncomprehendingly.

"Yes. I don't suppose he'll keep a girl of fourteen alone with him, in this great lonely place. She has had no proper education—only what poor Louis himself has taught her, instead of engaging a good sensible governess —and the best thing he could do would be to send her to some first-rate school."

"He may—eventually—-marry again."

"Henry," said his wife with gentle impressiveness, "do not say things that sound unfeeling."

Henry became silent.

"For my poor Esmée's sake," continued Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, after a suitable pause, " I want to be a mother to her child. And I can't help feeling, Henry, how dreadful it would be if Zella got into the hands of her father's French relations."

"I didn't know he had any."

"Henry! I have spoken of them to you myself times out of number. You can't have forgotten. There is that dreadful old Baronne, as she calls herself—though I always think those foreign titles sound very fishy—who pretends to be Zella's grandmother."

"How can she pretend to be? Either she is or she isn't," Henry, not unnaturally, remarked.

"She is Louis's stepmother, don't you remember? and consequently no relation whatever to Zella," explained Mrs. Lloyd-Evans resentfully. "And I must say, Henry, it seems to me very extraordinary that neither she nor her daughter should have taken the trouble just to cross the Channel, when they heard of this dreadful tragedy. Dearest Esmée was always perfectly sweet to the artful old thing, and Zella was taught to call her Granny and everything; and now this is the result."

This logical summing up of the situation was received by Mr. Lloyd-Evans in silence. Presently, however, he said tentatively:

"I suppose they are Roman Catholics?"

"Indeed they are, and I always think it is a most special mercy of Providence that poor Louis was not brought up to be one too. Luckily, his father made some wise stipulation or other before he died, that his son must be brought up in a good old-fashioned Huguenot religion; and the Baronne could not get out of it, although she and her Jesuits must have had a good try."

"Perhaps," said Henry, wisely avoiding the burning topics of the Baronne de Kervoyou and her hypothetical Jesuits—" perhaps Louis will want to keep Zella with him for the time being."

"I mean to talk to him about it, Henry. I know that gentlemen do not always quite understand; but I shall tell him that it would be the best thing possible for Zella to let me mother her for a few months, and perhaps choose a really nice school for her later on. Louis will feel much more free without her, too."

"Do you know what his immediate plans are?"

"He will certainly travel for a little while," instantly replied Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had no grounds whatsoever for the assertion, beyond her own conviction that this would be the proper course of conduct for her brother-in-law to pursue.

"Then, in that case, Marianne, do as you think best about offering to let Zella come to us.".

Marianne had every intention of doing as she thought best, but she said:

"Yes, Henry dear, one must do all in one's power at these sad times to help. Don't you remember the quotation I'm so fond of ?—

"' Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in one's own.'"

Henry, who was always rendered vaguely uncomfortable by the most distant allusion to what he collectively termed "poetical effusions," said that it was growing very dark, and Marianne had better come in before it became any colder.

"It's not a moment when one thinks of one's own health or comfort," Marianne murmured sadly, but she followed her husband indoors.

Meanwhile Zella, kneeling at her bedroom window, with elbows on the sill and chin resting on her clasped hands, wondered miserably what was to become of her. Her mother's funeral, the culminating episode of those dreadful few days which had been as years, was over. Zella felt dully that there was nothing more to wait for, and found herself thinking vaguely that surely now mother would come soon and make everything all right again and comfort her.

But it was mother who was dead!

Her thoughts wandered drearily to her father. There had been no more silent times alone with him; since Aunt Marianne's arrival, and since that brief episode in the study that morning, every word of which seemed burnt into her brain for ever, she had not seen him at all. She wondered if he would always be broken-hearted, never to laugh and joke again, like the kind, jovial father she had always known. Were all widowers always unhappy for ever? Zella tried to recall any that she had ever known, and could only remember old Mr. Oliver, who had come with his daughter that afternoon. He was a kind, cheerful old man, who always talked a great deal and laughed at his own jokes; but, then, he was nearly seventy years old, and his wife had died a great many years ago.

"Perhaps when papa is quite old," thought Zella despairingly: "But how dreadful it will be during all the years and years before he is as old as Mr. Oliver, if he goes on being unhappy all the time! Will there be this dreadful silence all through the house, and nothing to do, and everything reminding us all the time, and never being able to say anything about mother. . . . Aunt Marianne says he mustn't be reminded of his loss. One doesn't talk about people who have died.

Uncle Henry never speak about poor little cousin Archie who died, except Aunt Marianne sometimes, in a sort of very solemn religious way. But how could one speak like that about mother? And yet we couldn't ever talk about her in an ordinary way, as if she were still here. Oh, how can I ever bear it? To think that I shall never be happy any more!"

Then poor Zella reproached herself bitterly for the heartlessness of even wishing to forget and be happy again. She strove passionately for a resigned, heartbroken attitude of mind, that should eventually find its chief comfort in memories of past happiness and in the tender cherishing of a widowed and heartbroken father.

It was an intense relief to the hypersensitive child, though she did not own it to herself, to find, on the days following her mother's funeral, that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans now deemed the first acute stages of grief to be left behind. She dwelt more upon the happiness of Zella's dear, dear mother in heaven, and the tenderness with which she would watch over her little daughter, and the necessity for being brave and making the best of one's life.

"A change of scene will be very good for you, my poor child," Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her; "and poor papa will feel more free if he is alone just at present. I dare say he will go abroad for a little while;"

"We were going to Paris this winter to see Grand-mère and Tante Stéphanie."

"That will hardly be possible now, darling. Paris is no place to go to when one is in mourning."

Notwithstanding this conviction, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who knew that gentlemen did not always quite realize, felt no certainty that her brother-in-law would defer or omit the annual visit that he never failed to pay to his stepmother. Therefore she lost no time in suggesting that Zella should come to Boscombe and spend the winter at her uncle's house.

"It will be good for her, and she and Muriel are of just the same age, and can do their lessons and play together. And you know, Louis, the poor child would be dreadfully moped alone with you in this great house; and yet if you travel you could hardly take her with you, just at the age when she ought to be doing her lessons and everything."

"I suppose not," replied Louis in rather bewildered accents. It is very kind of you, Marianne. I had not given Zella much thought, I am afraid, poor child! But my mother would take charge of her, I know, if you really think she ought to have a change."

"Louis," said his sister-in-law earnestly, "not Paris. I implore you, for my dear sweet Esmée's sake, not Paris. A motherless child of Zella's age in Paris—a town without religion, and such a town! The modern Babylon!"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had only once spent a fortnight in the Modern Babylon, but she had read one or two novels on the subject, and her horror of the Ville Lumiere was only equalled by her ignorance.

"But, my dear Marianne," said Louis de Kervoyou, almost laughing, " Zella would be as well looked after at my mother's as she-would be anywhere; in fact, young girls in France are given very much less liberty than in England. She would never be allowed to go anywhere by herself."

"That is distinct proof of what I say, Louis. A town where such precautions are necessary can be no place for a young girl," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with triumphant logic. ...

"My mother and sister would look after her," repeated Louis patiently.

"I do not, naturally, wish to say one word against your stepmother, my dear Louis, or her daughter. But can you deny that they are Roman Catholics?"

"I have no wish to deny it, Marianne."

"Then I implore you, for her mother's sake, do not risk the loss of your daughter's faith. Foreigners and Jesuits are more artful than words can say—though, of course, I don't mean all. And I know some French people—you yourself, dear Louis"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became entangled in a painful confusion of words as she suddenly remembered that Louis himself laboured under the double misfortune of being by birth both a foreigner and a Frenchman. She wisely extricated herself by the unanswerable conclusion: "And I know you want what is best for dear little Zella."

"I will think it over."

"Louis! surely you cannot hesitate! One does not want to be interfering, but, after all—my own sister's only child, and Paris! A Roman Catholic household!"

Louis de Kervoyou listened without hearing. The stifling weight of pain seemed to be pressing on him with an intolerable heaviness, and he leant back in his chair, wondering if that soft, monotonous, rapid speech would never cease. He was a short, square-shouldered man, with thick light brown beard and hair, and eyes of the same dark grey as his daughter's. The habitual laugh in them was quenched now, and a keener physiognomist than Mrs. Lloyd-Evans might have read the hopeless misery in their depths.

When her low, relentless eloquence had at length ceased, he said wearily:

"I see what you mean. I will speak to Zella. She can do as she wishes."

He spoke English perfectly, with no trace of accent.

"No, Louis," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans inexorably, "I cannot think that right. Zella must do as she is told, not merely as she wishes. Remember that one must be doubly careful about instilling really high principles into her, now that she no longer has a mother's influence to watch over her. She really needs the discipline of a good school, and later on"

"Marianne, I am very grateful to you and Henry and if Zella wishes it she shall go back with you to morrow," Louis interrupted decisively. "But I can make no further plans for the moment. I will write to you later-"

He wished she would go.

"Are you going away, dear Louis?"

"I don't suppose so. Why should I?"

"A change of scene would distract your mind a little, and this place, so full of associations"

Louis de Kervoyou, the limits of his endurance reached, rose and opened the door.

"I will send for Zella now," he said, making way for her to pass.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw nothing for it but to leave the room. But her resources were not easily exhausted, and she made it so clear to the miserable and bewildered Zella how fully appropriate a visit to Boscombe would be, that the child, half hypnotized, felt that such calm, gentle assurance must necessarily be right.

Her father did not seem hurt, as Zella had half feared he might be, that she should prefer Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's house to his stepmother's little apartement in the Rue des ficoles where the Baronne de Kervoyou had offered to receive her. He said to Zella:

"You did not get on with your cousins last time you stayed at Boscombe."

"It will be different now; I am older," Zella replied faintly. Aunt Marianne had used the argument that morning. She wondered if her father was angry that she should elect to go to Boscombe. But if she had asked to be taken to Paris to her grandmother, of whom she was rather afraid, Aunt Marianne would have been vexed and thought it wrong. And Aunt Marianne would have been vexed, and called it morbid and unnatural, if Zella had asked to remain at Villetswood. Now that mother was no longer there, a sure refuge, and always certain to understand and approve, it had suddenly become of enormous importance to do what Aunt Marianne and everyone would think right and appropriate.

Zella looked timidly at her father.

"Do as you like, pauvre mignonne." But, in spite of the old term of endearment, he was not thinking very much about her.

The next day Zella thought that she would have given everything in the world not to be going away from Villetswood. But, with the new cowardice that seemed to have taken possession of her, she did not dare to change her mind.

She said good-bye, crying, to the maids who had been so kind to her, and ran sobbing upstairs at the last moment to seek the room which had been her mother's. But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans met her on the stairs, and said:

"Where are you going, darling? The carriage is at the door, and we must start in a minute."

Zella felt that her aunt's voice held the slightest possible tinge of disapproval, and she instinctively choked back her tears.

"I have forgotten something—in my room," she gasped.

"Then fetch it quickly, dear, while I wait for you." Mrs. Lloyd-Evans stood, inexorable, on the stairs. Zella ran into her own room, slamming the door to behind her, and stood for a moment looking half wildly round her, blinded with tears, and shaking with pain and a sort of senseless, unreasoning rebellion, against what or whom she hardly knew. She only knew that it had become impossible for her to go to her mother's room. She felt that she hated Aunt Marianne, that she was going away with her, and that nobody would ever understand or comfort her any more. She wrung her hands with a mad, foreign gesture.

The strange minute of agony passed, and Zella went downstairs with her hand clasped in Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's black-gloved one.

Louis de Kervoyou was in the hall.

Zella did not hear his low, rapidly spoken thanks and farewell to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. She looked round her, at the familiar oak staircase, the pictures hung upon the walls, the pieces of furniture she had known all her life. With a child's sense of finality, she felt as though she must be leaving Villetswood for ever.

"Adieu, mignonne!"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was getting into the carriage now.

"Papa," said Zella, clinging to him.

He looked at her compassionately.

"I'm not going away for always—you'll let me come back ?" she gasped, almost inarticulate.

"Whenever you like, of course, my poor little angel!" cried Louis vigorously, in tones more like his own than any Zella had yet heard from him since her mother's death.

"Write to me the very day and moment you want to come home, and you shall come."

The reassuring words and the kiss he gave her brought a feeling of warmth to Zella's heart. It was like a return to the old familiar atmosphere of petting and security, to which she had been accustomed all her life.