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244 she believed him to mean. He could see small risks, and provide against them. But he never appeared to see big risks. He could not see beyond his nose, or beyond the next corner. Little as she wished him to, it was yet a cause of irritation to her that he did not.

People had come and gone from Brayton during this month of August. People had also come and gone, and come back. Mouse was among these; she had given her husband leave to wander where he liked, provided that she might wander where she liked, and she had been at Brayton during the first week in August, had gone away for the second, and had just come back for another ten days before she went up to Scotland to make open house for September. Lady Heron had been in and out also; Harry had appeared from time to time, and disappeared and appeared again. A succession of people came for a Saturday till Monday, or from a Monday till Saturday, since to all those who were anchored in town till Parliament broke up Brayton was a perfect godsend. But two—three guests remained there without moving—Maud, Charlie, and their baby.

Little as maternity had proved to mean to Lucia, these weeks showed her with the significance of the writing on the wall what it might have meant, showed her, perhaps, what it should have meant. The truth came to her in ironical flashes, so to speak. The flash lit up the scene of what might have been. It never lit up the whole scene; it lit it up in sections, but before long she was able to piece the fragmentary illumination together, and form a fair idea of the whole. Sometimes such fragments seemed like unlocalized pieces of a puzzle, but even they gradually settled down into their places. She tried them in various ways before they all seemed to fit, but a little ingenuity soon made homes for them all.

One day, for instance, she was floating about on the lake with Maud. The punt had nosed its way into a Saragossa sea of water-lilies, and it was really impossible to proceed. So Lucia laid the dripping pole lengthwise on the boat, and sat down by Maud.

"We're anchored," she said, "as regards further progress. I shall sit down and rest, and then we'll go back."

Maud edged to the side of the boat to give Lucia room.

"I wonder if you ever do rest," she said. "You are so like—like something, the Flying Dutchman, if you will, that has to go on and on. But you like going on and on," she added; "you are not driven by a curse, but by blessings."