I have often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply." Fay winced.

Magdalen had noticed something, after all.
"I have sometimes feared,"-- continued Magdalen with the deliberation of one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening comes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes feared that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison." "My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen.

"My heart!" she laughed bitterly.

"Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out of it?
I suppose you mean poor dear Michael.

I hate men, and their selfish, stupid, blundering ways." Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers since the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen.
"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech avenue.
Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief.
Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family.
He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a pruning hook to their selfishness.