"Well," drawled the kindly American voice, "I'll be shot if that isn't the kindest thing that anyone ever said to me. And I believe you meant it too."
"Yes, I meant it," Anne said.
And though she smiled also there was genuine feeling in her words.
PART II
CHAPTER I
THE JESTER'S RETURN
The gradual coming of spring that year was like a benediction after the prolonged rigour of the frost. The lengthening evenings were wrapped in pearly mystery, through which the soft rain fell in showers of blessing upon the waiting earth. To Anne, it was as though a great peace had descended upon all things, quelling all tumult. She had resolutely taken up her new burden, which was so infinitely easier than the old, and she found a strange happiness in the bearing of it. The management of her husband's estate kept her very fully occupied, so that she had no time for perplexing problems. She took each day as it came, and each day left her stronger.
Once only had she been to Baronmead since the masquerade on the ice. It was in fulfilment of her promise to Nap, but she had not seen him; and as the weeks slipped by she began to wonder at his prolonged silence. For no word of any sort reached her from him. He seemed to have forgotten her very existence. That he was well again she knew from Lucas, who often came over in the motor with his mother.
As his brother had predicted he had made a rapid recovery; but no sooner was he well than he was gone with a suddenness that surprised no one but Anne. She concluded that his family knew where he was to be found, but no news of his whereabouts reached her. Nap was the one subject upon which neither Mrs. Errol nor her elder son ever expanded, and for some nameless reason Anne shrank from asking any questions regarding him. She was convinced that he would return sooner or later. She was convinced that, whatever appearances might be, he had not relinquished the bond of friendship that linked them. She did not understand him. She believed him to be headlong and fiercely passionate, but beneath all there seemed to her to be a certain stability, a tenacity of purpose, that no circumstance, however tragic, could thwart. She knew, deep in the heart of her she knew, that he would come back.
She would not spend much thought upon him in those days. Something stood ever in the path of thought. Invariably she encountered it, and as invariably she turned aside, counting her new peace as too precious to hazard.