It was nearly half-an-hour later when Julia picked up the letters; both were from Holland; one, she fancied, was from Mijnheer, one from his son.  She opened the latter first; she rather wondered what Joost could have to write about; he had acknowledged the receipt of the daffodil bulb long ago.  The matter was soon explained; the letter was as formal and precise as ever, but the emotion that dictated it, the distress and regret, was quite clear to Julia in spite of the primness of expression.  Clear, too, to her were the conflicting feelings that lay behind the lover’s contrition for what he feared was abuse of his mistress’s trust, and the grower’s desire that the treasured token should be resolved into, what it was, a wonderful bulb, a triumph of the horticulturist.  Julia smiled a little sadly as she read; not that she regretted the existence of the grower with the lover; she was glad to see it and to know that it was triumphing.  But the whole affair seemed so far off, so unimportant, so almost childish.  She did not care who knew he had the daffodil, or whether it bloomed or rotted.  In these days, when her self-apportioned burden was beginning to press heavily upon her shoulders, such things did not seem to matter.  She had a sense almost of disloyalty in feeling how little it mattered to her when it appeared to be so much to this loyal friend.

Captain Polkington had of late had several sudden attacks of a faintness which more often than not amounted to unconsciousness.  “Heart,” the doctor had said when he was summoned after the first one; he had not regarded them as very dangerous, that is to say not likely to prove fatal at any moment if properly treated at the time.  He had given instructions as to suitable treatment, emphasising the fact that the patient ought never to be long out of ear-shot of some one, as the attacks required immediate remedy.  He forbade excitement and much exertion, orders easy to fulfil in this case, and also stimulants of all sorts, an order not quite so easy.  Captain Polkington was much displeased about this last; he said it plainly showed the doctor a fool who did not know his business; stimulant, as every one knew, being the first necessity for a weak heart.  Julia pointed out that that must vary with the constitution, nature and disease; she also recalled the fact that alcohol never had suited her father.  He was naturally not convinced by her logic, and so was decidedly sulky; even in time, by dint of dwelling upon the subject, came to regard the treatment as a conspiracy to annoy him.  Julia regretted this but did not think it mattered very much, seeing that she had the keys; but then she did not know of that purchase made in the town.  The Captain, rebelling against the doctor’s order, hugged himself as he thought of it and of the comparatively sparing use he had made of it so far—­for fear of being found out.  There was no need of him to die by inches while he had that store of life and comfort; so he told himself, and secretly made