She did not certainly want to be found out, either by Nelly or the Farrells; and she took elaborate steps to prevent it.  She wrote first a long letter to Howson giving her reasons for refusing to believe in his tentative identification of the man at X——­ as George Sarratt, and begging him not to write to her sister.  ’That would be indeed cruel.  She can just get along now, and every month she gets a little stronger.  But her heart, which was weakened by the influenza last year, would never stand the shock of a fearful disappointment.  Please let her be.  I take all the responsibility.  That man is not George Sarratt.  I hope you may soon discover who he is.’

Step No. 2 was to go, on the very morning after she arrived in London, to the Enquiry Office in A——­ Street.  Particulars of the case in France had that morning reached the office, and Bridget was but just in time to stop a letter from Miss Eustace to Nelly.  When she pointed out that she had been over to France on purpose to see for herself, that there was no doubt at all in her own mind, and that it would only torment a frail invalid to no purpose to open up the question, the letter was of course countermanded.  Who could possibly dispute a sister’s advice in such a case?  And who could attribute the advice to anything else than sisterly affection!

Meanwhile among the mountains an unusually early winter was beginning to set in.  The weather grew bitterly cold, and already a powdering of snow was on the fell-tops.  For all that, Nelly could never drink deep enough of the November beauty, as it shone upon the fells through some bright frosty days.  The oaks were still laden with leaf; the fern was still scarlet on the slopes; and the ghylls and waterfalls leapt foaming white down their ancestral courses.  And in this austerer world, Nelly’s delicate personality, as though braced by the touch of winter, seemed to move more lightly and buoyantly.  She was more vividly interested in things and persons—­in her drawing, her books, her endless knitting and sewing for the wounded.  She was puzzled that Bridget stayed so long in town, but alack! she could do very well without Bridget.  Some portion of the savour of life, of that infinity of small pleasures which each day may bring for the simple and the pure in heart, was again hers.  Insensibly the great wound was healing.  The dragging anguish of the first year assailed her now but rarely.

One morning she opened the windows in the little sitting-room, to let in the sunshine, and the great spectacle of the Pikes wrapped in majestic shadow, purple-black, with the higher peaks ranged in a hierarchy of light behind them.

She leant far out of the window, breathing in the tonic smell of the oak leaves on the grass beneath her, and the freshness of the mountain air.  Then, as she turned back to the white-walled raftered room with its bright fire, she was seized with the pleasantness of this place which was now her home.  Insensibly it had captured her heart, and her senses.  And who was it—­what contriving brain—­had designed and built it up, out of the rough and primitive dwelling it had once been?