startled at finding how much I felt the news, and that although it could not be a surprise it was a real shock. When I left England I had hoped for this. It seemed as if otherwise I should be going into my new life burdened with the thought of Mary's loneliness, with no one to live with her but Miss Mills. Now nothing ostensibly was altered, and yet I had a horrible sense of my own loneliness and a hankering after my mother, my home and my childhood. Also I had a haunting feeling that my own future would be what I had dreaded for Mary, a tête-à-tête with Miss Mills. I tried to sympathise with our dear old governess in her tremulous delight at Mary's engagement, and in her own acuteness in having foreseen it from the first. I struggled against my selfishness, and I think no one noticed my sadness but Mr. Sutcliffe. Marcelle was too deeply preoccupied. For a couple of days George Sutcliffe's eyes followed me about with mute sympathy and readiness to help—a help that in loyalty and truth I felt bound, if only to myself, to reject and avoid. I think perhaps he kept silent because there was an instinct growing upon us four that each must stand alone, and not depend upon the others in the troubles that were coming near.
Silence is the fortress of the strong, and there are times when men and women understand instinctively that they must be strong, if their lives are not to be overwhelmed in a great deep.
It seemed gradually, as time wore on, as if no one of us ventured on a talk alone with one of the other three, if he or she could avoid it. Even Marcelle and I liked to keep Miss Mills with us, and willingly endured her endless patter as to shrines and miracles, and the strangest relics and the most incoherent fulfilment of the most enigmatic prophecies.
