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The story he had heard on the occasion of his second visit to Cherry Orchard haunted Anstice for days There was so served a sentence of iht well be supposed the most impossible for any decent person to commit; yet Anstice knew instinctively that Mrs Carstairs had spoken the truth; and although for the last few years he had been far too ainst Fate to spare any pity for the woes of others, he did feel a surprising sy and apparently lonely woman whom the world had treated so cruelly

That she was innocent of the cried, Anstice never doubted Since the catastrophe which had altered his whole outlook on life, he had been inclined to be cynical regarding the good faith of eneral; but Mrs Carstairs' manner had carried conviction by its very lack of emphasis She had not protested her innocence--indeed, he could barely reiven hiuilty of the loathsome deed; yet her very quietness, the very indifference of her ht than an avalanche of protestation would have done

As a noh Mrs Carstairs' face was not one to be easily read, the shape of her brow and the classical outline of her features seemed to Anstice to preclude any possibility of the enerate taint which must have inspired the communications of whose authorship she had been accused

The very fact that she did not appear to care whether or no he believed in her strengthened Anstice's belief that she was an innocent and ed woman; and in his mind he linked her with himself as one of the victi her for a week Anstice declared her to be in no further need of his services; and she acquiesced with the saraciousness hich she had welcomed his visits

He noticed that she was rarely to be seen in the village or small town of Littlefield Occasionally she would pass him on the road in a beautiful motor hich he supposed her husband to have endowed her, and at these tihter, wrapped in furs, on the seat beside her

Anstice's introduction to the latter took place about a fortnight after his last visit to Cherry Orchard in a professional capacity It chanced that he was interested in a small Convalescent Hohbourhood, and on one or two days had cut short his visit to Mrs Carstairs on the grounds that his presence was required at the Home Rather to his disappointhtest interest in the schereat when, on one fine spring e bunch of beautiful daffodils from Cherry Orchard, with a rather carelessly worded request that he would give them to the Home if they were likely to be welcome there