During the latter half of the winter they had corresponded, though Cicely was the worst of letter-writers; and since Nelly and her sister had been in Rydal again there had been constant meetings.  Nelly’s confidences in return for Cicely’s were not many nor frequent.  The effects of grief were to be seen in her aspect and movements, in her most pathetic smile, in her increased dreaminess, and the inertia against which she struggled in vain.  Since May began, she had for the first time put on black.  Nobody had dared to speak to her about it, so sharply did the black veil thrown back from the childish brow intensify the impression that she made, as of something that a touch might break.  But the appearance of the widow’s dress seemed to redouble the tenderness with which every member of the little group of people among whom she lived treated her—­always excepting her sister.  Nelly had in vain protested to Farrell against the ‘spoiling’ of which she was the object.  ‘Spoiled’ she was, and it was clear both to Hester and Cicely, after a time, that though she had the will, she had not the strength to resist.

Unless on one point.  She had long since stopped all subsidies of money from Farrell through Bridget, having at last discovered the plain facts about them.  Her letter of thanks to him for all he had done for her was at once so touching and so determined, that he had not dared since to cross her will.  All that he now found it possible to urge was that the sisters would allow him to lend them a vacant farmhouse of his, not far from the Loughrigg Tarn cottage.  Nelly had been so far unwilling; it was clear that her heart clung to the Rydal lodgings.  But Hester and Cicely were both on Farrell’s side.  The situation of the farm was higher and more bracing than Rydal; and both Cicely and Farrell cherished the notion of making it a home for Nelly, until indeed—­

At this point Farrell generally succeeded in putting a strong rein upon his thoughts, as part of the promise he had made to Hester.  But Cicely, who was much cooler and more matter of fact than her brother, had long since looked further ahead.  Willy was in love, irrevocably in love with Nelly Sarratt.  That had been plain to her for some time.  Before those days in the flat, when she herself had fallen in love with Nelly, and before the disappearance of George Sarratt, she had resented Willy’s absurd devotion to a little creature who, for all her beauty, seemed to Cicely merely an insignificant member of the middle classes, with a particularly impossible sister.  And as to the notion that Mrs. Sarratt might become at some distant period her brother’s wife, Lady Farrell of Carton, Cicely would have received it with scorn, and fought the realisation of it tooth and nail.  Yet now all the ‘Farrell feeling,’ the Farrell pride, in this one instance, at any rate, was gone.  Why?  Cicely didn’t know.  She supposed first because Nelly was such a dear creature, and next because the war had made such a curious difference