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 "Yes," cried Aunt Cassie, reviving again, "Yes! There's the boy she ought to have married. . . ."

"And Mrs. Soames," said Sabine. "She'll be pleased at the news."

Olivia spoke for the first time in nearly half an hour. "It's no use. Mr. Pentland has been over to see her, but she didn't understand what it was he wanted to tell her. She was in a daze . . . only half-conscious . . . and they think she may not recover this time."

In a whisper, lost in the greater agitation of Aunt Cassie's sobs, she said to Sabine, "It's like the end of everything for him. I don't know what he'll do."

The confusion of the day seemed to increase rather than to die away. Aunt Cassie was asked to stay to lunch, but she said it was impossible to consider swallowing even a crust of bread. "It would choke me!" she cried melodramatically.

"It is an excellent lunch," urged Olivia.

"No . . . no . . . don't ask me!"

But, unwilling to quit the scene of action, she lay on Horace Pentland's Regence sofa and regained her strength a little by taking a nap while the others ate.

At last Anson called, and when the news was told him, the telephone echoed with his threats. He would, he said, hire a motor (an extravagance by which to gage the profundity of his agitation) and come down at once.

And then, almost immediately, Michael telephoned. "I have just come down," he said, and asked Olivia to come riding with him. "I must talk to you at once."

She refused to ride, but consented to meet him half-way, at the pine thicket where Higgins had discovered the fox-cubs. "I can't leave just now," she told him, "and I don't think it's best for you to come here at the moment."