grounds about the house.

Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel's
year of widowhood abroad--an organ put into the big hall, the library
made livable and re-catalogued--when it was permissible to suppose she
had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of
life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts,
without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termed
worldliness. Mrs. Franklyn, as I remembered her, was a quiet little
woman, shallow, perhaps, and easily influenced, but sincere as a dog and
thorough in her faithful Friendship. Her tastes at heart were catholic,
and that heart was simple and unimaginative. That she took up with the
various movements of the day was sign merely that she was searching in
her limited way for a belief that should bring her peace. She was, in
fact, a very ordinary woman, her caliber a little less than that of
Frances. I knew they used to discuss all kinds of theories together, but
as these discussions never resulted in action, I had come to regard her
as harmless. Still, I was not sorry when she married, and I did not
welcome now a renewal of the former intimacy. The philanthropist she had
given no children, or she would have made a good and sensible mother. No
doubt she would marry again.

"Mabel mentions that she's been alone at The Towers since the end of
August," Frances told me at teatime; "and I'm sure she feels out of it
and lonely. It would be a kindness to go. Besides, I always liked her."

I agreed. I had recovered from my attack of selfishness. I expressed my
pleasure.

"You've written to accept," I said, half statement and half question.