’That will be the best plan; but, oh, Ursula, how am I to be patient?  To think of my dear boy becoming a common workman! he is poor, then; he wants money.  I feel as though I cannot rest, as though I must go to London and look for him myself.’

Gladys looked so excited and feverish that I almost repented my confidence.  I did all I could to soothe her.

’Surely, dear, it is not so difficult to wait a little, knowing him to be alive and well, as it was to bear that long suspense.’

‘Oh, but I never believed him to be dead,’ she answered quickly.  ’I was very anxious, very unhappy, about him, often miserable, but in my dreams he was always full of life.  When I woke up I said to myself, “They are wrong; Eric is in the world somewhere; I shall see him again."’

’Just so; and now with my own eyes I have seen him, evidently in perfect health and in good spirits.’

‘Ah, but that troubles me a little,’ she returned, and her beautiful mouth began to quiver like an unhappy child’s.  ’How can Eric, my Eric who loved me so, be so light-hearted, knowing that all these years I have been mourning for him?  I remember how he used,’ she went on plaintively, ’to whistle over his work, and how Giles used to listen to him.  Sometimes they kept up a duet together, but Eric’s note was the sweeter.’

‘We must be careful not to misjudge him even in this,’ was my answer:  ’how do you know, Gladys, that he has not assured himself that you are all well, and, as far as he knows, happy?  Or perhaps his heart was very heavy in spite of his whistling.  A young man does not show his feelings like a girl.’

‘No doubt you are right,’ she replied, sighing, and then she turned her head away, and I could see the old tremulous movement of her hands.  ‘Ursula,’ she said, in a very low voice, ’have you told Mr. Cunliffe about this?’

‘Uncle Max!’ I exclaimed, concealing my astonishment at hearing her mention his name of her own accord.  ’No; indeed, he is away from home:  we have not met for the last three weeks.  Would you wish me to tell him, Gladys?’

She pondered over my question, and I could see the curves of her throat trembling.  Her voice was not so clear when she answered me: 

’He might have helped us.  He is kind and wise, and I trusted him once.  But perhaps it will be hardly safe to tell him:  he might insist on Giles knowing, and then everything would be lost.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked hastily.  ’Surely Mr. Hamilton ought to know that his brother is alive.’

’Yes, but not now—­not until I have seen him.  Ursula, you are very good; you are my greatest comfort; but indeed you must be guided in this by me.  You do not know Giles as I do.  He is beginning to influence you in spite of yourself.  If Giles knows, Etta will know, and then we are lost.’

Her tone troubled me:  it was the old keynote of suppressed hopeless pain:  it somehow recalled to me the image of some helpless innocent bird struggling in a fowler’s net.  Her eyes looked at me with almost agonised entreaty.