"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery.

"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with
me."

Whereupon Anne kissed her.

"And I may tell Walter what you've said?"

It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would
shrink from telling him.

Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They
returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was
burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an
arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.

His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that
room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together.
She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when
Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always
in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine
devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of
the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been
hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She
felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith,
it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his
goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in
Anne.