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 "I'm sorry. He was a good man."

I cleared my throat.

"There are new people here, Chris, but they love you as the old ones did."

He forced himself to smile at us both, to a gay response.

"As if I didn't know that to-night!"

But he did not know it. Even to me he would give no trust, because it was Jenny the girl who had been his friend and not Jenny the woman. All the inhabitants at this new tract of time were his enemies, all its circumstances his prison-bars. There was suspicion in the gesture with which, when we were back in the drawing-room he picked up the flannel from the work-table.

"Whose is this?" he said curiously. His mother had been a hard-riding woman, not apt with her needle.

"Clothes for one of the cottages," answered Kitty, breathlessly. "We—we've a lot of responsibilities, you and I. With