At this point two splashes fell, luckily not on the letter, but on the blotting paper beside it, and Nelly hastily lifted her handkerchief to dry a pair of swimming eyes.

‘But he can’t see—­he won’t know!’ she thought, apologising to herself; yet wrestling at the same time with the sharp temptation to tell him exactly how she had suffered, that he might comfort her.  But she repelled it.  Her moral sense told her that she ought to be sustaining and strengthening him—­rather than be hanging upon him the burden of her own fears and agonies.

She went on bravely—­

’Of course, after the news in the paper this morning,—­and yesterday—­I was worried till I heard.  I knew—­at any rate I guessed—­you must have been in it all.  And now you are safe, my own own!—­for three whole blessed weeks.  Oh, how well I shall sleep all that time—­and how much work I shall do!  But it won’t be all war-work.  Sir William Farrell came over to-day, and showed me how to begin a drawing of the lake.  I shall finish it for your birthday, darling.  Of course you won’t want to be bothered with it out there.  I shall keep it till you come.  The lake is so beautiful to-night, George.  It is warmer again, and the stars are all out.  The mountains are so blue and quiet—­the water so still.  But for the owls, everything seems asleep.  But they call and call—­and the echo goes round the lake.  I can just see the island, and the rocks round which the boat drifted—­that last night.  How good you were to me—­how I loved to sit and look at you, with the light on your dear face—­and the oars hanging—­and the shining water—­

’And then I think of where you are—­and what you have been seeing in that awful fighting.  But not for long.  I try to put it away.

’George, darling!—­you know what you said when you went away—­what you hoped might come—­to make us both happy—­and take my thoughts off the war?  But, dear, it isn’t so—­you mustn’t hope it.  I shall be dreadfully sorry if you are disappointed.  But you’ll only find me—­your own Nelly—­not changed a bit—­when you come back.

’I want to hear everything when you write—­how your men did—­whether you took any prisoners, whether there was ammunition enough, or whether you were short again?  I feel every day that I ought to go and make munitions—­but somehow—­I can’t.  We are going to Carton on Saturday.  Bridget is extremely pleased.  I rather dread it.  But I shall be able to write you a long letter about it on Sunday morning, instead of going to church.  There is Rydal chapel striking twelve!  My darling—­my darling!—­good-night.’

CHAPTER VI

The following Saturday afternoon, at three o’clock, the Carton motor duly arrived at the Rydal cottage door.  It was a hot summer day, the mountains colourless and small under their haze of heat, the woods darkening already towards the August monotony, the streams low and shrunken.  Lakeland was at the moment when the artists who haunt her would rather not paint her, remembering the subtleties of spring, and looking forward to the pageantry of autumn.  But for the eye that loves her she has beauties enough at any time, and no blanching heat and dust can spoil the lovely or delicate things that lie waiting in the shade of her climbing oak-woods or on her bare fells, or beside her still lakes.