“I am going to make visits in the village,” she said.  “I want a basket of good things to take with me.  Stourton’s children need feeding after their measles.  They looked very thin when I saw them playing in the road yesterday.”

“Yes, dear,” Rosalie answered.  “Mrs. Noakes shall prepare the basket.  Good chicken broth, and jelly, and nourishing things.  Jennings,” to the butler, “you know the kind of basket Miss Vanderpoel wants.  Speak to Mrs. Noakes, please.”

“Yes, my lady,” Jennings knew the kind of basket and so did Mrs. Noakes.  Below stairs a strong sympathy with Miss Vanderpoel’s movements had developed.  No one resented the preparation of baskets.  Somehow they were always managed, even if asked for at untimely hours.

Betty was sitting silent, looking out into the greyness of the autumn-smitten park.

“Are—­are you listening for anything, Betty?” Lady Anstruthers asked rather falteringly.  “You have a sort of listening look in your eyes.”

Betty came back to the room, as it were.

“Have I,” she said.  “Yes, I think I was listening for—­something.”

And Rosalie did not ask her what she listened for.  She was afraid she knew.

It was not only the Stourtons Betty visited this morning.  She passed from one cottage to another—­to see old women, and old men, as well as young ones, who for one reason or another needed help and encouragement.  By one bedside she read aloud; by another she sat and told cheerful stories; she listened to talk in little kitchens, and in one house welcomed a newborn thing.  As she walked steadily over grey road and down grey lanes damp mist rose and hung about her.  And she did not walk alone.  Fear walked with her, and anguish, a grey ghost by her side.  Once she found herself standing quite still on a side path, covering her face with her hands.  She filled every moment of the morning, and walked until she was tired.  Before she went home she called at the post office, and Mr. Tewson greeted her with a solemn face.  He did not wait to be questioned.

“There’s been no news to-day, miss, so far,” he said.  “And that seems as if they might be so given up to hard work at a dreadful time that there’s been no chance for anything to get out.  When people’s hanging over a man’s bed at the end, it’s as if everything stopped but that—­that’s stopping for all time.”

After luncheon the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with a suggestion of endlessness.  It was a sort of mist itself, and became a damp shadow among the bare branches of trees which soon began to drip.

“You have been walking about all morning, and you are tired, dear,” Lady Anstruthers said to her.  “Won’t you go to your room and rest, Betty?”

Yes, she would go to her room, she said.  Some new books had arrived from London this morning, and she would look over them.  She talked a little about her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Ughtred came over to her and stood close to her side holding her hand and stroking it, she smiled at him sweetly—­the smile he adored.  He stroked the hand and softly patted it, watching her wistfully.  Suddenly he lifted it to his lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion.