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 she did not want to be pitied. She hated pity, because it implied weakness on her part.

"Oh," she said quickly, "they'll come back from time to time. . . . I think that some day they may come back here to live."

"Yes. . . . Pentlands will belong to them one day."

And then for the first time she remembered that there was something which she had to tell him, something which had come to seem almost a confession. She must tell him now, especially since Jean would one day own all of Pentlands and all the fortune.

"There's something I didn't tell you before," she began. "It's something which I kept to myself because I wanted Sybil to have her happiness . . . in spite of everything."

He interrupted her, saying, "I know what it is."

"You couldn't know what I mean."

"Yes; the boy told me himself. I went to him to talk about Sybil because I wanted to make sure of him . . . and after a time he told me. It was an honorable thing for him to have done. He needn't have told. Sabine would never have told us . . . never until it was too late."

The speech left her feeling weak and disconcerted, for she had expected anger from him and disapproval. She had been fearful that he might treat her silence as a disloyalty to him, that it might in the end shatter the long, trusting relationship between them.

"The boy couldn't help it," he was saying. "It's a thing one can't properly explain. But he's a nice boy . . . and Sybil was so set on him. I think she has a good, sensible head on her young shoulders." Sighing and turning toward her again, he added, "I wouldn't speak of it to the others . . . not even to Anson. They may never know, and if they don't what they don't know won't hurt them."

The mystery of him, it seemed, grew deeper and deeper