She shivered.  Then, the impression fading as quickly as it had come, she spoke defiantly, as if trying to reassure herself.

“There aren’t many risks in these piping times of peace.  Soldiers don’t die in battle nowadays; they retire on a pension.”

“Die in battle!  Did you think I was afraid of that?” There was a sudden fierce contempt in Elisabeth’s voice.

Sara looked at her with astonishment.

“Weren’t you?” she said hesitatingly.

Elisabeth seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder.  Then, all at once, she checked herself, and again Sara was conscious of that curiously secretive expression in her eyes, as though she were on guard.

“There are many things worse than death,” she said evasively, and deliberately turned the conversation into other channels.

During the days that followed, Sara became aware of a faintly perceptible difference in her relations with Elisabeth.  The latter was still just as charming as ever, but she seemed, in some inexplicable way, to have set a limit to their intimacy—­defined a boundary line which she never intended to be overstepped.

It was as though she felt that she had allowed Sara to approach too nearly some inner sanctum which she had hitherto guarded securely from all intrusion, and now hastened to erect a barricade against a repetition of the offence.

More than once, lately, Sara had broached the subject of her impending departure from Barrow, only to have the suggestion incontinently brushed aside by Major Durward, who declared that he declined to discuss any such disagreeable topic.  But now, sensitively conscious that she had troubled Elisabeth’s peace in some way, she decided to make definite arrangements regarding her immediate future.

She was agreeably surprised, when she propounded her idea, to find Mrs. Durward seemed quite as unwilling to part with her as were both her husband and son.  Apparently the alteration in her manner, with its curiously augmented reticence, was no indication of any personal antipathy, and Sara felt proportionately relieved, although somewhat mystified.

“We shall all miss you,” averred Elisabeth, and there was absolute sincerity in her tones.  “I don’t see why you need be in such a hurry to run away from us.”  And Geoffrey and Tim chorused approval.

Sara beamed upon them all with humid eyes.

“It’s dear of you to want me to stay with you,” she declared.  “But, don’t you see, I must live my own life—­have a roof-tree of my own?  I can’t just sit down comfortably in the shade of yours.”

“Pushful young woman!” chaffed Geoffrey.  “Well, I can see your mind is made up.  So what are your plans?  Let’s hear them.”

“I thought of taking rooms for a while with some really nice people—­gentlefolk who wanted to take a paying guest—­”

“Poor but honest, in fact,” supplemented Geoffrey.