’I think she’s very—­very good-looking’—­said Nelly, heartily.  ’Only, why’—­she hesitated, but her half-laughing look continued the sentence.

’Why does she blacken her eyebrows, and paint her lips, and powder her cheeks?  Is that what you mean?’

Nelly’s look was apologetic.  ‘She doesn’t really want it, does she?’ she said shyly, as though remembering that she was speaking to a kinswoman of the person discussed.  ‘She could do so well without it.’

’No—­to be quite candid, I don’t think she would look so well without it.  That’s the worst of it.  It seems to suit her to be made up!—­though everybody knows it is make-up.’

‘Of course, if George wanted me to “make up,” I should do it at once,’ said Nelly, thoughtfully, propping her chin on her hands, and staring at the lake.  ‘But he hates it.  Is—­is Miss Farrell—­’ she looked round—­’in love with anybody?’

Miss Martin laughed.

’I’ll leave you to find out—­when you go there.  So if your husband liked you to paint and powder, you would do it?’

The older woman looked curiously at her companion.  As she sat there, on a rock above the lake, in a grey nurse’s dress with a nurse’s bonnet tied under her chin, Hester Martin conveyed an impression of rugged and unconscious strength which seemed to fuse her with the crag behind her.  She had been gathering sphagnum moss on the fells almost from sunrise that morning; and by tea-time she was expecting a dozen munition-workers from Barrow, whom she was to house, feed and ‘do for,’ in her little cottage over the week-end.  In the interval, she had climbed the steep path to that white farm where death had just entered, and having mourned with them that mourn, she had come now, as naturally, to rejoice with Nelly Sarratt.

Nelly considered her question, but not in any doubtfulness of mind.

‘Indeed, I would,’ she said, decidedly.  ’Isn’t it my duty to make George happy?’

‘What “George”?  If Mr. Sarratt wanted you to paint and powder——­’

‘He wouldn’t be the “George” I married?  There’s something in that!’ laughed Nelly.  Then she lifted her hand to shade her eyes against the westering sun—­’Isn’t that Sir William coming?’

She pointed doubtfully to a distant figure walking along the path that skirts the western edge of the lake.  Miss Martin put up her glasses.

’Certainly.  Coming no doubt to give you a lesson.  But where are your sketching things?’

Nelly rose in a hurry.

‘I forgot about them when I came out.  The telegram—­’ She pressed her hands to her eyes, with a long breath.

‘I’ll run back for them.  Will you tell him?’

She departed, and Hester awaited her cousin.  He came slowly along the lake, his slight lameness just visible in his gait—­otherwise a splendid figure of a man, with a bare head, bearded and curled, like a Viking in a drawing by William Morris.  He carried various artist’s gear slung about him, and an alpenstock.  His thoughts were apparently busy, for he came within a few yards of Hester Martin, before he saw her.