User Localization Strategies In The

Face Of Technological Breakdown:

Biometric In Ghana’s Elections Isidore
Kafui Dorpenyo
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User Localization
Strategies in the Face
of Technological
Breakdown
Biometric in Ghana’s Elections

Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo

 User Localization Strategies in the Face
of Technological Breakdown

“Dr. Dorpenyo is to be applauded for highlighting an often forgotten issue of

how technology issues in the Global South can inhibit social justice for users who
rely on technology to participate in the democratic process. This is a timely and
important material that will shape conversations on technology use in the fields
of technical communication and rhetoric for a long time.”
—Godwin Agboka, Associate Professor of Technical Communication,
University of Houston-Downtown, USA

“User Localization Strategies in the Face of Technological Breakdown is a nuanced,

insightful text that will be useful to technical communication researchers inter-
ested in theories and methodologies of localization, biometrics, and cross-cul-
tural technical communication. A much-needed perspective from an important
community that can completely transform the ways in which technical commu-
nicators think about technology design in both local and global contexts. This
book makes powerful interventions in current conversations about decolonizing
technical communication through social justice work.”
—Laura Gonzales, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at The
University of Texas at El Paso, USA, and author of Sites of Translation: What
Multilinguals Can Teach Us About Digital Writing and Rhetoric

“Dorpenyo’s work provides technical communicators with a deep and very privi-
leged look into the fascinating world of technology transfer in Ghana. The story
he tells of how biometrics were adapted by Ghana’s election officials and voters
is a case study for how to conduct analyses of ‘user localization strategies’ for our
field.”
—Tharon W. Howard, Professor of Professional Communication and Rhetoric
and Usability Testing Facility Director, Clemson University, USA

“Dr. Dorpenyo’s unique perspective and robust analysis of the adoption and use
of biometric in Ghana’s elections illustrates how users adapted this technology
for their social, cultural, physical, and political contexts using linguistic, subver-
sive, and user-heuristic localizations. This work, situated at the intersections of
technical communication, civic engagement, social justice, user experience, and
localization earns its significance by pointing out the importance of election tech-
nologies in non-western cultures and providing us with rhetorical localization
strategies to consider within cultural technical communication.”
—Michelle F. Eble, Associate Professor of Technical and Professional
Communication, East Carolina University, USA
 Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo

User Localization
Strategies in the Face
of Technological
Breakdown
Biometric in Ghana’s Elections
Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-26398-0 ISBN 978-3-030-26399-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26399-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
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Naomi and Jude
 Foreword

Election fraud and other voting anomalies encompass technological,

social justice, and systemic issues are rampant throughout the world,
including in the USA. I voted in Orange County, Florida, in the infa-
mous 2000 Presidential election that pitted George W. Bush against Al
Gore. The election, my first in the State of Florida, turned out to be
one of the most controversial in US history. Hanging chads1 entered
the everyday vernacular and quickly became national news. The sheer
number of hanging chads generated by Florida’s faulty voting machines
meant that many votes cast in good faith were not registered properly,
leading to an Electoral College margin that was “so close that it took
one’s breath away” (Elving, 2018).

As the Electoral College vote took shape on election night, with the results
piling up from around the country, it was clear the vote in Florida was
going to determine not only the winner of that state’s 25 electoral votes
but the next occupant of the Oval Office. Although Gore had won the
popular vote by roughly a half-million ballots, the all-important Electoral
College count from the other 49 states (and District of Columbia) was
so close that whoever won Florida would be the overall winner. (Elving,
2018)

1A chad is a tiny bit of paper that is punched from a ballot using a punch-type mechanical

voting machine. A hanging chad is one that is not fully separated from the ballot during
voting.

vii
viii FOREWORD

The election wasn’t ultimately decided until the Supreme Court ruled in
favor of Bush on December 12, 2000. And by some accounts, including
the following summary by the nonpartisan voter advocacy organization
FactCheck.org, the 2000 Presidential Election results are still in dispute.

According to a massive months-long study commissioned by eight news

organizations in 2001, George W. Bush probably still would have won
even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a limited statewide recount to
go forward as ordered by Florida’s highest court.
Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the lim-
ited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked
for, the study found.
On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would
have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there
been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide. However, Gore
never asked for such a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only
a recount of so-called “undervotes,” about 62,000 ballots where voting
machines didn’t detect any vote for a presidential candidate.
None of these findings are certain. (Jackson, 2008)

The recount and delay of election results, though supremely disruptive

to the country as a whole, was not even Florida’s only election upheaval
that year. A comprehensive report by the US Commission on Civil
Rights revealed eight distinct areas of voting violations in the 2000 elec-
tion, including, but not limited to, “allegations that Florida voters were
prevented from casting ballots or that their ballots were not counted” as
well as “allegations of widespread voter disenfranchisement in Florida.”
The Commission is authorized—and obligated—to investigate all claims
that suggest “any pattern or practice of fraud” and any infringement on
the right of citizens “to vote and have votes counted.”
As this brief trip down memory lane suggests, election fraud and
other voting anomalies can be blamed on technological, social justice,
and systemic issues, among others. Voting controversies have not dis-
appeared from US politics in the nearly two decades since the fraught
2000 Presidential election. If anything, they are more visible than ever,
despite innovations such as biometric verification. Moreover, the US
is far from alone in its struggle against election fraud and voter disen-
franchise; as Isidore Dorpenyo’s unique research illustrates, election
fraud is a worldwide problem with a complex array of potential—if often
partial—solutions.
 FOREWORD ix

Dorpenyo inserts the democratic practice of electing public officials

squarely into the conversation surrounding international technical com-
munication scholarship and practice. User Localization Strategies in the
Face of Technological Breakdown: Biometric in Ghana’s Elections is, of
course, set in Ghana, Dorpenyo’s native country, a post-colonial democ-
racy in West Africa. Government corruption and inconsistent record-keep-
ing have allowed an epidemic of over-voting to take place. People vote
more than once; unregistered people (both citizens and non-citizens) cast
ballots illicitly; even minors manage to vote. In addition, according to the
Trading Economics website, around 45% of Ghanaians live in rural areas,
so uneven access to polls in remote locations may exacerbate inequities.
In 2012, in an attempt to combat what they saw as rampant voting fraud,
the government of Ghana decided to adopt biometric authentication,
defined by security firm Gemalto as a “security process that relies on the
unique biological characteristics of an individual to verify” his or her iden-
tity. Biometrics are commonly used by law enforcement, border security
personnel, health identification, and, as in Ghana and elsewhere, for voter
registration and other civil identity applications. Broadly, their purpose
is “to manage access to physical and digital resources such as buildings,
rooms and computing devices” (Gemalto, 2019).
Dorpenyo employs stakeholder interviews and genre analysis of mar-
keting materials and instructional documentation to closely examine the
government of Ghana’s process of implementing the biometric verifica-
tion device (BVD) for voter registration and authentication. Operating
with a decolonial stance and a technical communication scholar’s lens,
he augments the strategy of technological localization that Nancy Hoft
introduced to the field of technical communication more than 20 years
ago (Hoft, 1995), melding it with Johnson’s (1998) user-centered
design framework and Sun’s (2012) attention to the rift between design-
ers’ and users’ cultures. Dorpenyo’s detailed, well-researched, and care-
fully contextualized longitudinal study, while providing a social justice
perspective on enfranchisement, culminates in a set of best practices for
technical communication researchers, teachers, students, and practition-
ers who are engaged—as most of us ultimately are—in international and
intercultural technology transfer. For example, he arrives at three local-
ization strategies: linguistic localization, user-heuristic experience local-
ization, and subversive localization, which operate within what he calls
a localization cycle. Each of these manifests somewhat differently with
different outcomes and distinct affordances and constraints.
x FOREWORD

Dorpenyo’s stake in the proper conduct of elections may have begun

when, as a child, he helped his father run for public office. But his pro-
fessional affiliation with the field of technical communication leads him
to this thoroughly researched case, which complicates and interrogates
the transfer of “Global North” technology to the “Global South” as
much more than an instrumental process.

Houghton, MI, USA Karla Saari Kitalong, Ph.D.

Professor of Humanities
Michigan Technological University

References
Elving, R. (2018). The florida recount of 2000: A nightmare that goes on haunting.
Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-
recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting.
Gemalto. (2019). Biometrics: Authentication and identification. Retrieved from
https://www.gemalto.com/govt/inspired/biometrics.
Hoft, N. L. (1995). International technical communication: How to export infor-
mation about high technology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Jackson, B. (2008). The Florida recount of 2000. Retrieved from https://www.
factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/.
Johnson, R. (1998). User centered technology: A rhetorical theory for computers
and other mundane artifacts. Albany: State University of New York.
Sun, H. (2012). Cross-cultural technology design: Creating culture-sensitive tech-
nology for local users. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Acknowledgements

A book is never the work of a single author. Rather, it is an articulation

and re-articulation of ideas from a network of people. I am fortunate to
have had such support come my way from a variety of people I met along
the way when working on this book. I owe these people my every grati-
tude. The first of such persons is Karla Saari-Kitalong whom I have come
to identify as my post-dissertation mentor. Thank you for inspiring me to
undertake this project and for guiding me to think critically about every
aspect of the project, and the argument I make in this book. Right after
my dissertation, you helped to organize think about how to switch a pro-
ject from dissertation mode to a book mode. You were there for me from
the very first day I started this book to the last day. Even though you
were busy, you took the time to read every chapter and offer insightful
feedback. In addition, Shelley Reid and Godwin Agboka read my man-
uscript and offered extremely insightful criticisms for the book. Shelley,
I cannot forget the hours we spent in your office trying to map out the
contours of the project and how to better foreground my argument and
make it relevant to the field of technical communication. It came out well
and it helped me to focus on localization. Karla, Shelley, and Godwin
helped me to sharpen my argument and analysis. Kirk St. Amant also
read chapters and offered wonderful guidelines. He helped me to identify
presses I could send my work to. Thanks a lot!
I am also indebted to my dissertation committee members, Ann
Brady, Robert Johnson, Marika Seigel, and Godwin Agboka. To Ann
Brady, my supervisor, and number one cheerleader, I say I am eternally

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

grateful. You never stopped making me believe that my work is “top

notch.” Your excitement about my project kept me going. Also, your
feedback, weekly meetings, and guidance have brought me this far. I also
appreciate the efforts of Robert Johnson, Marika Seigel, and Godwin
Agboka for sharing their depth of knowledge, insights, and advice to
me. Their final comments strengthened the structure and content of my
work. My committee members are awesome!
I also benefitted immensely from conversations with colleagues at
Michigan Technological University and at Conferences: Laura Gonzales,
Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Keshab Acharya, Jessica Lauer, Amanda Girard,
Joana Schreiber, Valorie Trosch, Ruby Pappoe, and Regina Baiden. My
good friend Laura Gonzales, one of my reviewers, offered invaluable
feedback. I am also grateful to my colleagues at Mason: Debra Lattanzi
Shutika (my Chair), Douglas Eyman, Shelley Reid, Heidi Lawrence, Alex
Monea, and Steve Holmes for their support.
My initial data collection benefitted from a grant from the Humanities
Department at Michigan Tech, and the second phase of data collection
was supported by a research start-up fund from the English Department
at George Mason.
I was lucky to have Rachel Daniel as my editor. Thank you Rachel for
your patience and wise counsel. Madison Allum, Rachel’s assistant, was
also helpful in this process. My reviewers offered invaluable feedback on
my work.
Electoral Commission officials across the country were generous with
their time and resources. Thanks to all those who willingly participated
in this project.
Finally, I thank my family and friends for their endless support. My
friend, Emmanuel Agyapong and his wife Linda, gave me a place to
sleep when I travelled to the Western Region to interview participants.
Emmanuel also went to the extent of looking for participants to be inter-
viewed. I benefitted from his friendship greatly. My cousin, and child-
hood friend, John Konoh Tordzro, who also happens to be a volunteer
for the Electoral Commission, helped me to find participants in Accra.
I couldn’t have made it without his support and dedication. I have also
enjoyed the support and encouragement of Philomena Yeboah, Ellis
Adjei Adams, and Joyce Yenupini Adams. My in-laws, Ebenezer Appiah
and Martha Plange, gave me emotional support. So did my parents,
Joana Afiadenyo and Francis Dorpenyoh, and my siblings, Tarcisius
Edem Dorpenyo and Irene Sena Dorpenyo. My Wife, Naomi Appiah,
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii

and my nine-month-old baby, Jude Selikem Dorpenyo, filled me with

enough energy and support throughout the process. Jude taught me
that time management was of the essence if I could achieve anything.
I cherished every moment I spent joggling between diaper changing,
feeding, lulling Jude to sleep, and writing a monograph. I have also ben-
efitted enormously from the Kufour and Minyila families. Occasionally,
the Minyila’s took the burden off my shoulders by caring for little Jude.
Our casual conversations lightened me up and gave me enough energy
to pursue this project.
 Contents

1 Recovering the Lost Voices of Users in Localization 1

2 Biometric Technology: The Savior of a Risky Electoral

System 37

3 Decolonial Methodology as a Framework for Localization

and Social Justice Study in Resource-Mismanaged Context 53

4 Stories of Users’ Experiences 79

5 Linguistic Localization: Constructing Local/Global

Knowledge of Biometric Technology 91

6 User-Heuristic Experience Localization 129

7 Subversive Localization 145

8 You Are Not Who You Say You Are: Discriminations

Inherent in Biometric Design 185

xv
xvi CONTENTS

9 Conclusion: Participatory User Localization 201

Bibliography 221

Index 233
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Emergent categories derived from grounded theory analysis

of interview data 74
Fig. 5.1 Educational material defining biometric technology 97
Fig. 5.2 Similarities between old and new registration systems 98
Fig. 5.3 General advice to voters 99
Fig. 5.4 Oblique overview of BVD 101
Fig. 5.5 Instructions showing outcomes of verification 102
Fig. 7.1 Functional elements of the biometric device 153
Fig. 7.2 The process of unpacking the biometric device 154
Fig. 7.3 Message indicating when to clean the scanner 155
Fig. 7.4 Message indicating biometric should be handled with care 156
Fig. 7.5 Laser beam 157
Fig. 7.6 Instructions on how to switch the device on/off 160
Fig. 7.7 Instructions on how to scan the barcodes on register with
biometric barcode 161
Fig. 7.8 Instructions cautioning on staring at laser in the barcode 162
Fig. 7.9 Linear model of the user manual design process 165
Fig. 7.10 The oblique picture of the biometric device used during the
elections 176
Fig. 7.11 Instructions showing possible outcomes of verification 177
Fig. 7.12 The voters register in view 180
Fig. 7.13 Verification procedures for verification officers 181
Fig. 9.1 Localization cycle 203

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Recovering the Lost Voices

of Users in Localization

As a young first child of my parents, I had the opportunity of ­following

my father to political campaigns. Yes, I remember vividly how I enjoyed
carrying his food and water along anytime he went on political cam-
paigns. I also recall the many times I have enjoyed chants of political
songs and the sense of comradery exhibited by party members during
campaigns. Growing up in an environment that was constantly filled with
political conversations and party paraphernalia, I had hoped I was going
to become the son of a Member of Parliament. Unfortunately, this burn-
ing desire to become the son of a Member of Parliament, mostly because
of the social prestige that came with the position, never materialized
because my father could not secure the required votes needed to beat the
parliamentary candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC),
one of the two main political parties in Ghana.
I recollect with much clarity the pain that came with both defeats.
Those were moments when the entire family could lugubriously go days
without a shower; there was less appetite for food and no desire to even
switch on the radio or television in earnest desire to avoid listening to
election results or just to avoid hearing about the success story of the
opponent. Our nostalgic reminiscences of political campaigns were pain-
ful to think about: the several moments we walked for miles to places
which had no accessible roads; the days we left home very early and came
back the following day; moments when we abandoned our campaign cars
because they got stuck in mud; and several instances where we had to
put up with people who verbally abused us. In both of his losses, my

© The Author(s) 2020 1

I. K. Dorpenyo, User Localization Strategies in the Face of Technological
Breakdown, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26399-7_1
2 I. K. DORPENYO

father was persuaded by his followers to reject the election results. These
people cited instances of vote rigging, ballot box snatching, harassment
of polling officers by opposing party, impersonation, and voting by
minors. Against all odds, my father conceded defeat. At that young age,
I said to myself that if instances cited by father’s followers were anything
to go by, then something needed to be done.
Frustrated by constant conversations about these alleged electoral
malpractices, I said I was never going to vote again. Suddenly, the
Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) announced that it was going to
adopt a biometric verification device (BVD) to enhance the country’s
electoral process. According to the EC of the country, the biometric was
going to: assist in detecting and preventing practices of impersonation
and multiple voting; expose electoral offences; provide transparency in
results, and make it very hard for someone to use the particulars of a
different person to vote. With the representation of the biometric in such
a positive light, many Ghanaians went to the polls with hopes, but lit-
tle did the election management body conceive that the biometric would
introduce new challenges into the electoral process.
Now imagine that you confidently walk to the polling station with
hopes that you are going to register or vote only to realize that when
you put your fingers on the biometric technology for authentication or
verification, the biometric fails to recognize your fingers. You try again
and it fails to pick your fingers. You try for the third time, but the tech-
nology indicates that you are not who you say you are. Frustrated with
the technology, you give up. Which means you cannot vote. On a scarier
note, imagine that you go to the polling center to vote only to realize
that the only biometric technology in the voting center has broken down
or batteries of the technology were constantly draining because the tech-
nology performs poorly under dusty, hot, or humid weather conditions.
Or, that the biometric has broken down because election officials did not
obey instructional procedures. As if these breakdowns were not enough,
the printers used during the elections also started breaking down because
they could not take the pressure. The consequence of these breakdowns
or rejections was that people were disenfranchised. An EC official I inter-
viewed, for instance, indicated that:

then come election day it broke down, some people couldn’t use it, some
people had to use the manual registration which was outside the law and
in fact some people got disenfranchised because the machines broke down
 1 RECOVERING THE LOST VOICES OF USERS IN LOCALIZATION 3

and when it was rescheduled not all people were able to come back so
these were the initial problems with the use of the device…When you take
the verification device, for example, the printers were just breaking down
like that because they could not take the pressure. If you start printing,
you print 1, 2, 3, 4 then the printer breaks down… the BVD failed and
Superlock Technologies Limited (STL), the technicians, also blamed it on
humidity, high temperature.

If you happen to be near or in the center of this scene, how would you
feel? These anecdotes indicate that the biometric technology broke down
on several levels: (1) biometric performed poorly because it could not
withstand the heat in Ghana; (2) the machine could not read the fin-
gerprints of some voters; (3) training in biometric use didn’t really
help since most users struggled to use the technology on election day;
and (4) user instruction manual was confusing. Realizing the sever-
ity of the problem, the EC and voters started adopting local measures
to salvage the situation: Those who were rejected were asked to use
Coca-Cola, local herbs, and detergents such as OMO to wash their
hands, and canopies were used in some polling stations to control the
temperature.
The biometric breakdowns in Ghana reveal that designing for global
use is challenging. Designing for global users means thinking about the
broader context within which a product or technology will be used.
Broader context, as I use in this book, acknowledges a relationship
between weather conditions (or physical environment), the space, loca-
tion and place of technology use, the users of the technology, how the
technology will be used, what situation will trigger the adoption and use
of the technology, the needs of the users, and when it will be used. This
means there is a need to understand that “context is not about a super-
ficial interaction. It’s about deep engagement [with] and an immersion
in the realities and the complexities of our context” (Douglas, 2017).
Thinking about and engaging in these broad contextual issues have
proven to be daunting tasks for designers, because in most cases the
designers of technologies we use do not even know which user will pur-
chase their products and how those users will even put the technology to
use. In the same way, in most cases, users do not know the designers of
the technology they purchase and use. For instance, the EC officials of
Ghana did not have any knowledge of the company which designed the
biometric technology in use.
4 I. K. DORPENYO

It is thus an established fact that a designer may never meet or know

about users of the technologies they design. This bitter truth is tacitly
expressed by Jonathan Colman, a experienced product user and content
strategist, when he revealed one of several ‘wicked ambiguities’ UX offi-
cials encounter, “the challenges of creating solutions for people whom
we’ll never know in our lifetime” (Colman, 2015). Even though Colman
is addressing user experience (UX) experts, this is the reality most
designers will grapple with for a lifetime: Users will only be represented
with mental models. Huatong Sun makes this more revealing when she
identifies that a gap exists between the product designer and the prod-
uct user. This gap is as a result of the existence of two levels of localiza-
tion: localization at the developer’s site and localization at the user’s site
(Sun, 2004, p. 2). This gap, as I see it, presents one underlying issue: the
clash of cultures. In one instance, there is the culture of design which
influences how a technology should be designed and used, and on the
other, there is the culture of use. The disconnect between culture of
design and culture of use can result in the mass breakdown of technol-
ogy as was the case in Ghana.

Culture as a Problem and a Relevant Factor

in Cross-Cultural Design Practices

Scholarship indicates that designers are aware of the wicked ambigu-

ity Colman hints at, so they work hard to resolve the tension that exists
between the culture of design and user culture either by international-
izing, localizing, or customizing their products to make them appeal
to global users (Esselink, 2000; Hoft, 1995; Sun, 2012; Taylor, 1992).
Interestingly, these processes used by product designers emphasize the
importance of “culture” in producing globally acceptable products.
Taylor (1992), for instance, reveals that internationalization occurs
because developers seek to extract “the cultural context from a pack-
age” (p. 29). The end goal of this process is “to be able to have a sort
of generic package, with an appendix or attachment that details all the
culturally specific items” (p. 29). It is obvious from this that designers
extract culture from their products because they have become increas-
ingly aware that the local culture in which they design products shape the
way their products are designed and used. As a result, they find it appro-
priate to try to move beyond their local culture to make the product
appealing to other cultures. Localization, on the other hand, is defined
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 Anne smiled absently.
“Yes. You’ll be glad to get home, I dare say Burks, and Paris is on
the way. Please give me my writing things. I must put off all my
engagements, and write a hundred letters, so I don’t want to be
disturbed this morning.”
Left alone, Anne re-read the letter which had prompted her
decision to leave Rome at once. Short, hurried as it was, it conveyed
the misery of the writer better than pages of outpouring, and Anne
did not need the supplication contained in the last lines to lead her to
any creature in distress.
“Poor little soul! Poor wretched little thing!” she thought, before
she forced herself to attend to the lengthy correspondence which in
view of her large circle of Roman friends, such a hurried leave-taking
entailed.
Unwilling to hinder Burks in her work of packing, she went herself
to post her letters, and to dispatch the telegram which warned
Madge Dakin of her arrival in Paris next day.
While she walked to the post-office, while she mingled with the
crowds in the street, and vaguely heard the cries of the flower
vendors, the cracking of whips, the babel of tongues, her thoughts
were far away. Her friend’s letter had told her nothing definite, but
Anne guessed the nature of her trouble.
Imperceptibly, from sadness and perplexity her expression
became stern. A passionate anger such as for years she had not
experienced, grew momentarily stronger.
“Always the same,” she repeated to herself. “Cruel, cynical. Too
light-minded to desire anything strongly. Selfish enough to gratify
every passing whim——” And then her thoughts received a sudden
disconcerting check.
What of the years of loyal friendship he had given her? How
could she forget his tenderness and sympathy at the bitterest
moment of her life? How ignore either, the many kindnesses difficult
for a man wholly cynical, impossible for one wholly selfish, which he
had shown to the down-trodden, the beaten, the unsuccessful in
life’s struggle?
Once again, for the thousandth time she recognized the
complexity of every human being. The baffling contradictions; good
interwoven with evil, nobility with meanness, honour with disloyalty. It
was the great intricate puzzle of human nature she was once more
considering; a tangle which nothing but the cloak of infinite charity
can cover. The only cloak which glorifies and reveals what is good
and strong, while in pity, in despairing tenderness it hides under its
ample folds, the shame, the weakness, the ugly scars of the form it
both shelters, and defines.
Anne sighed as she reached the top of the Spanish steps, and
leant on the wall to take a last look at the city she loved.
Overhead, that “great inverted bowl we call the sky,” here, deeply
blue, surpassingly beautiful. Beneath it, the dancing sunshine
playing alike on dome and pinnacle, roof and tree, and on the
thousands of men and women in the busy streets. Men and women
hiding within their breasts incalculable heights and depths of virtue
and vice, actual or potential. Men and women soon to be covered by
the earth on which they walked, to make place for another, yet
essentially the same swarm of human beings between the same
earth and sky, still asking the same questions under the same
sunshine, which laughed, and never replied.
It was the eternal puzzle, the old riddle to which through the ages
no solution has been found.
Anne sighed once more, and then smiled at the futility of
considering it again just now, when there was packing to be done.
He maketh His sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust.
The words slipped into her mind before she turned away, with a
momentary sensation of reassurance. At least the sunshine fell upon
every one alike. Perhaps it symbolized a cloak of charity wider and
larger than any woven by human minds.

“Will Madame come upstairs?”

The maid re-entered the room in which Anne had been waiting,
and then preceded her up the staircase to a door which she threw
open.
A little figure huddled over the fire, rose hastily as she entered,
and with incoherent words that sounded like a cry, threw herself into
her arms.
 “Oh! You are good! You are good!” Madge repeated, hiding her
eyes like a child against the elder woman’s arm. “I should have died
if you hadn’t come.”
When at last she drew herself away, and looked at her visitor,
Anne had to suppress a start of dismay.
She scarcely recognized Madge Dakin.
Her cheeks were white and sunken, and swollen with much
crying. She was pitifully thin, and her nervous hands strayed
constantly about her face. Her pretty hair, generally so carefully
waved and tended, was screwed into an untidy knot at the back of
her head. She had evidently not troubled to dress all day, for she
wore a bedroom wrapper, whose pink ribbons she had forgotten to
tie and arrange.
“My dear child,” declared Anne, “you must give me some tea. I’m
dying for it, and I shall be speechless till I get it.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I make it myself generally. I—forgot it this
afternoon.”
Anne sat down in an armchair near the fire, and purposely
allowed her to put on the kettle, and make all the preparations alone.
A glance at the room, a fairly large one, from which a bedroom
opened, showed that her friend had probably done nothing but cry
over the fire for several days.
It was dusty, and littered with papers, books, working materials. It
looked untidy, and uncared for.
There were dead flowers in the vases, and the curtains half
drawn, obscured the already dying light of a dull day.
When the kettle began to boil, she rose, and gently pushed
Madge into a chair.
She made the tea herself, while in a sort of stupor of
wretchedness, Mrs. Dakin watched the movements of her white
fingers.
“Now drink that, my child,” she said, putting the cup and saucer
into her hand.
“Have you had any lunch?”
Madge shook her head.
“Then you must eat a plateful of these excellent biscuits, and you
must begin at once.”
 She proceeded to drink her own tea, talking about her journey,
and the slowness of the trains, till watching the face opposite to her
she saw a trace of colour in the cheeks.
“And now what is it, my dear?” she asked very gently, as Mrs.
Dakin pushed the cup away from her.
For answer, Madge burst into a flood of hopeless tears.
Anne leant forward and took her hand. “It’s François Fontenelle,
isn’t it?” she inquired.
Mrs. Dakin raised her head, her lips parted like a baby’s.
“How did you guess?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve known him for a great many years—very well.”
There was the faintest trace of bitterness in Anne’s tone. The
sight of the miserable bowed figure had revived some of her
resentment.
With a quick movement, Madge left her chair, and knelt beside
her, hiding her face, with a childish gesture, while Anne’s arm went
round her as tenderly as a mother’s.
“I’m going to tell you everything,” she began in a half-choked
voice. “I’ve been so wicked, Miss Page, that I—I can’t believe it.
Every now and then I think it’s a dream.” She shivered in Anne’s
grasp, and sobbed a moment.
“It was my fault. I thought I was so bored. I thought I was tired of
Harry—of Harry who has always been a thousand times too good for
me. And so I—I flirted with him. Helen Didier says I threw myself at
his head. She’s a hateful woman, and I loathe her, but that’s true, I
did. He never cared for me. In my heart I knew he didn’t, even when
I led him on to make love to me. It was nothing but my wretched
wicked vanity. Just because I was bored. Just because——” Her
voice sank, and for a moment Anne heard nothing but the painful
catching of her breath in exhausted sobs.
“And the awful part was,” she stammered at last, “that I didn’t
care either. I never meant it to be more than a flirtation. At least I
think I didn’t,” she added with a pitiful attempt at perfect honesty.
“But——” She stopped short.
“But it became more than that. He was your lover?”
She nodded her head, and then suddenly clasped Anne with
convulsive strength.
 “And Harry’s coming to-morrow. And I’m a vile woman!”
She cried the words aloud in a panic of horror.
“Oh, Miss Page, what shall I do. What will become of me? what
shall I say to Harry? I shall go mad!”
Anne laid her cheek on the head that rested against her shoulder,
and was silent.
She understood what was passing in the soul of the weak, terror-
struck little woman. The horror of outraged conventions, the
nightmare conviction that she, the descendant of generations of
respectable, honest women, she who had never heard of the sin she
had committed, except in accents of disdain or horror, had become
an abandoned creature, unfit for decent society, branded, defiled,
eternally lost.
Anne’s heart went out to her in passionate pity.
“Oh help me! Tell me what to do,” Madge wailed. “You’re the only
woman in the world I dared to tell, because——”
The abrupt pause, and a nervous gesture betrayed her, and Anne
started a little, overcome by a sudden conviction.
“Yes. Why did you tell me, my dear?” she asked quietly.
“Because,” began Madge hurriedly, “you are so kind, so sweet, I
felt——”
“That wasn’t the only reason.”
“No!” she cried with sudden recklessness. “It wasn’t. It’s because
I heard that you—that you—Helen Didier found it out. She never
rested. And then I asked—him, and he said I was never to mention
your name to her. But she found out all about it, on the pretence that
it was you who had corrupted my mind, and made me what she calls
fast. And so——”
“And so you thought you might confess to a fellow sinner?”
Anne’s cheek still rested on Madge’s hair, and over her head, her
eyes smiled very quietly into the fire.
Madge was silent.
“I knew you wouldn’t utterly despise me,” she murmured at last,
in a low voice.
“He has gone?” asked Anne after a moment. “You sent him
away?”
 “He came on Monday—two or three days ago. I’ve forgotten
when.” She made a distracted gesture. “Until—until just lately, it was
all right. We were not—not——”
“Not lovers,” said Anne, finishing the sentence for her in an even
voice.
“Well, he came. And by that time I’d come to my senses, and to
all this awful misery. He’s very kind,” she went on with a sort of
surprise, as a child might speak of the unexpected clemency of
some grown-up person. “He said he didn’t want to make me
unhappy, and if I pleased it should all be at an end, and he would go
away. So he went. But Harry’s coming to-morrow, and I daren’t meet
him. I daren’t look at him. It’s awful—awful! I would kill myself,—but I
daren’t do that either.”
She rose from her knees, and sank back in her chair, exhausted
and shaking; her eyes fixed on Anne were the eyes of a little hunted
animal.
All the terror of the gulf she had put between herself and
respectable women, all the horror of feeling herself déclassée
outside the pale of moral virtue, filled her conventional little soul. It
outweighed the sense of her personal disloyalty; it was greater than
her sense of wanton treachery towards her husband. She was no
longer a respectable woman, and in that fact lay the sting.
Anne leant towards her. “You haven’t told Harry?”
She shook her head.
“Then don’t.”
Madge stared at her incredulously. “But—but look at me!” she
stammered. “He’ll see. He’d guess, even if I don’t tell him. I can’t
stop crying. I can’t—help it.”
While she spoke the tears were running down her cheeks.
“Yes, you can. You can pull yourself together. He expects to find
you ill, but you can meet him with a bright face—for his sake.”
“For his sake?” repeated Madge.
“Yes. Think of him a little, my dear, and forget yourself.”
“You mean he would never forgive me? Never take me back?”
“On the contrary, I know he would. He loves you. You would
never hear a word of reproach from his lips. Your husband is a fine
man, Madge, and a generous one—and a gentleman.”
 “Yes, he is! He is!” she returned eagerly. “He would forgive me,
and I ought to tell him. I should never have a happy moment if I
didn’t. My life would be spoilt.”
“And what about his?” asked Anne quietly.
Madge gazed at her. “You mean he—he wouldn’t forget it?”
Anne answered with a curious smile.
“You don’t understand much about men, my little Madge,” she
said. “When they love, their instinct of possession is stronger than
anything you can guess. It’s bound up with a thousand forces from
primitive barbarous times. It may be unreasonable and savage, but
it’s there. A generous man forgives, and even tries to understand.
But the wound remains, and it rankles in spite of him. Have you the
right to inflict such a wound? The wrong is yours. You should be the
only one to suffer.”
“But I shall suffer,” broke in Madge. “And much more, if I feel I’m
deceiving him.”
“Then accept the extra suffering, and bear it alone,” returned
Anne quickly. “One pays for everything, Madge. Is it fair to call upon
some one else to share the expenses?”
There was silence for a moment.
“If you had married—afterwards, I mean,” said Madge
hesitatingly, “wouldn’t you have told your husband?”
“There was no question of my marriage,” answered Anne rather
painfully. “But if your circumstances were mine,” she added after a
moment, “I should act as I advise you to act.”
Madge’s grasp on her hand tightened, but she did not speak.
“Go back and be a good wife to him,” Anne went on. “My dear,”
she said sadly, “you don’t know your blessings. You have married a
man with a faithful steadfast nature. His love will never fail you, and
in that, thousands of women might envy you. All the material for
happiness is within your reach. Happiness for the lack of which many
women starve all their days. It never comes to them. It’s never
offered. And if they can’t bear to be utterly without the joy of love,
before the earth covers them, they have to take it at a great price.”
Her smile brought the tears again to Madge’s eyes.
“Such a price, my dear little Madge, as I’m glad you know nothing
about.”
 “Dear Miss Page!” she whispered. A moment’s half-awed
revelation came to her of all that her friend’s words implied. In the
light of it, her own fears and regrets, her whole mental attitude
towards the past, later as well as immediate, seemed incredibly
petty, mean, and trivial. She was ashamed with a nobler less selfish
shame than she had ever experienced.
Her cheeks burnt, and her tears ceased to flow.
“Oh! I’ve been a beast!” she cried involuntarily. “I’ve always been
so selfish and hateful to Harry. I’ve taken everything as my right. I’ve
never thought of any one but myself. I’ve never thought of the lives
of other women. You are right. It would only be one more selfishness
to tell him. I won’t. I’ll love him instead.”
“Do that, my dear, and you’ll make him the happiest of men,”
returned Anne simply. “And don’t refuse him children, Madge,” she
added softly. “You owe him that. Besides, you’re refusing the
greatest happiness for yourself. The blessing that women—women
like me, can never have. That’s part of the price, you see. Not the
least part of the price,” she added as though to herself.
She rose, and Madge stood up too, still holding her hand.
The firelight fell on Anne’s face, and the younger woman looked
at her as though she had never seen her before,—with a tender
surprised admiration.
“You are so beautiful!” she exclaimed suddenly.
The first smile Anne had seen came to her lips.
“I shall pray that my first baby may have eyes just like yours,” she
said, almost gaily. “And hair like your lovely hair—when she’s a little
older.”
Anne laughed. “It used to be brown. It went white very quickly—in
three months.”
As she glanced into the mirror above the fireplace, she thought
suddenly of François’s portrait with its mass of soft fair hair, couleur
de miel; couleur de poussière dorée. She remembered the epithets
of the painters.
“I must go now,” she said. “To-morrow Harry will be here to take
care of you. Make yourself look pretty, Madge. Put on your nicest
frock, and do your hair the way he likes, high up, you know, with little
fluffy curls about. And make the room pretty, dear. I’ll order some
flowers to be sent round to-night. Lots of them, so you’ll have plenty
to do to arrange them. No more sitting by the fire and crying, mind!
No looking back. Only look forward.”
Madge held her tight. “Oh! you’ve given me so much courage!”
she exclaimed with a long sigh of relief. “You dearest of women. I’ll
do everything you tell me.”
 XX
Outside, in the lighted street, Anne called a cab, and gave the
address of the nearest florist.
Her thoughts dwelt upon Madge, as the carriage rattled down the
boulevard.
“I’m scarcely sorry,” was the outcome of her grave reflection. “It
will make a woman of her. She needed a great shock, or a great
sorrow to take her out of herself, and make her realize what it would
mean to lose her husband.”
It was only while she was choosing flowers for her, that the part
of Madge’s confession which concerned herself, came back
confusedly to her mind. It gathered greater clearness as she drove
towards her hotel, and by the time she reached it, and was sitting by
her bedroom fire after dinner, she found herself wondering what
would be the outcome of the matter.
That she might be sure of Madge Dakin, her instinct satisfied her.
Yet the results of Madame Didier’s inquiries would in all probability,
from other sources, reach Dymfield. What then?
Anne’s thoughts flitted from Mrs. Carfax to Mrs. Willcox, the
solicitor’s wife, a lady who was interested in Church Missions, and
Rescue Homes for Fallen Women. The memory of Miss Goldie, a
maiden lady of substantial means, and views of life which even
Dymfield considered rigid, came to her, and forced a smile. She saw
her sitting in the front pew in church, her black bonnet with two
purple pansies upon it, tied tightly under her chin. She saw her
angular elbows, under the short mantle of black silk adorned with
bugle trimming. She heard her rasping voice, which seldom softened
even for Anne, who as a rule affected insensibly the voices of her
neighbours.
She remembered Mr. Willcox, stiff, erect, lean-faced Mr. Willcox,
loud in his denunciation of the present age, which he considered lax
and immoral to the last degree.
She thought of the Vicar, with his blustering attempts at
modernity, and his violently expressed scorn of everything but
muscular Christianity and common sense.
Dymfield was the typical English village, with its types indigenous
to the soil, firmly rooted, impervious to criticism, profoundly self-
satisfied.
Dymfield for Anne would be impossible.
But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was
inextricably linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that
was full of fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The
bare idea of leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart.
She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room.
The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her
with a pathetic desire to laugh.
“After all these years! At my age,” she murmured.
She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of
time which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered
pitifully why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she
shrank from the thought that people should talk about it. It had been
for so many years her secret possession, the memory that had
sweetened all her later days.
It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were
gossiping about her. About her and René.
A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire.
After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near.
She thought of the parting with René in the morning—the morning he
left her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau.
The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered
that he turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun
was on his hair, as he crossed the room.
Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken,
Anne put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice.
But she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he
was gone, her resolution wavered.
Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she
not stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the bonne
had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there
was one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month
they had been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day.
She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the
envelope at which she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her
preparations.
Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to betray
itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be stopped—
forcibly prevented from reaching her destination.
She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman
she half feared she might in fact have become.
Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused
nightmare impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange
voices. Of people who for some mad reason were going about as
usual, occupied with the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing,
eating and drinking, unmoved, unconcerned.
One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would
sit down anywhere with a Bradshaw before her, and at once,
mechanically plan her journey back to Paris.
Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections,
pictured the moment of her arrival.
It would be tea-time. The lamps just lit. René sitting by the fire—
René leaping to his feet to meet her.
Or it would be early morning. She would open his bedroom door
softly....
And then the realization of her madness; more sleepless nights,
fresh strange hotels, new cities up and down whose streets she
wandered wondering why she should be there, why she should enter
one building rather than another, why the day never passed, and
when the night came, thinking would God that it were morning.
So terribly near seemed her past torture, that with all her strength
Anne tried to stem the flood of reminiscence.
 Thank God, little Madge Dakin had never known, would never
know, misery such as hers! In the midst of her whirl of memories
Anne gratefully considered this.
With an effort at diversion, she tried to recall the names of the
cities in which she stayed, through which she had passed during the
first few months of her exile.
In vain. She had only a confused impression of scorching streets,
of palm trees against a hot blue sky; of seas hatefully, mockingly
calm and blue.
She was in Athens when the news of his death reached her, and
with it a packet of letters written during the first few weeks after her
departure. They were letters from René, never sent, because she
had left no address. Letters written in the frenzied hope that some
day soon he must hear from her.
It was then that she tasted her first moment of peace.
She remembered sitting in a little walled garden somewhere
within the city, and for the first time seeing that the blue sky
overhead was beautiful.
She noticed the broad leaves of a fig-tree clambering upon the
wall opposite, and listened to the dripping of a little stream which
flowed from a stone trough into a well whose mouth was fringed
delicately with ferns and wild flowers. And for the first time came to
her a premonition of the calm and peace, and even happiness of her
later years.
Her emotional life was over. No man as a lover would ever exist
for her again. But she had experienced the love for which she had
been willing to pay. She had paid, and some day she would be
content.
René dead, had become hers once more—this time for ever.
Later in the year she met François at Antibes, and heard calmly,
with scarcely a stab of pain, what she was prepared to hear. She had
been right to go. But René had died before he ceased to love her.
Afterwards, her true wander years began. And then at last, the
thought of the house and the garden at Dymfield became dear to
her, and she went to them as a child goes home.
Anne let her mind dwell gratefully upon the quiet happy years she
had spent at Dymfield.
 She thought of her work among her flowers, and the paradise of
beauty it had produced. She thought of the poorer village people
whose lives she knew, whose children she loved, to whom for years
she had been a friend. She remembered her little plans for their
welfare, all the pleasant trifles which made up the sum of her daily
existence.
And as she mused, came a wondering recognition of the healing
of time, the passing of all violent emotion, whether of joy or of
despair.
From some recess of her memory there sprang the words of an
Eastern sage, who as a motto true alike in times of sorrow and times
of delight, told his disciple to grave upon his signet ring, one
sentence—This too will pass.
 XXI
Anne started for London next morning, intending to spend the
night in town, and devote the next day to her brother, and to Sylvia
Carfax, to whom she had not found time to write.
Early on Thursday morning she drove to Carlisle House.
The page boy who took her up in the lift, indicated a door at the
end of the corridor, and left her.
Anne knocked, and in response to a voice within, entered Sylvia’s
bedroom.
It was littered with cardboard boxes, open trunks, dresses, hats,
raiment of all sorts, and stumbling over the obstacles in her way,
Sylvia rushed towards her with a cry of joy.
Even before she kissed her, Anne had time to notice the worried
look on the girl’s face, which robbed it of its youthful prettiness.
“Oh!” she gasped. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come in time, and I
didn’t know what to do, or how to get out of it. Oh! I’m so thankful to
see you, Miss Page. Sit down. Do sit down—if you can find a place,”
she added, trying to laugh.
Anne chose the bed as the only available spot.
“My dear child, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed. “You’re
packing, I suppose. Where are you going?”
“To—America,” returned Sylvia, with a gulp.
Anne looked at her, and drew her down beside her on the bed.
“Tell me all about it from the very beginning,” she said, with quiet
insistence.
“Don’t be angry with me,” implored Sylvia, her lips trembling. “I
thought I’d been so clever to arrange it all myself, without saying a
word about it. But—but now I’m frightened. And my contract’s
signed, and I daren’t——”
“But what’s it all about? Tell me clearly, Sylvia.”
Sylvia made an effort to obey, and though lucidity was not the
strong part of her story, by the end of half an hour’s questioning and
explanation, Anne gathered that the girl had fallen into the hands of
the manager of a third-rate theatrical company. The man had
tempted her with the offer of a “star” part in a musical comedy, and
she had signed a contract with him for America.
“He said he would make my fortune,” she declared. “He praised
my voice so much, and told me I was wonderful, and that I should
make a great hit. But he made me promise not to tell any one I was
going. He said he wanted to have the credit of discovering me, and
all that sort of thing. I knew mother and father would be horrified, but
I thought it was too good a chance to lose, and that I’d risk their
anger. Because, if I turned out a success, and made a lot of money,
they would be very proud,” she added.
The instinctive knowledge of human nature shared by the pillars
of the Church, caused Anne despite her anxiety, a secret smile.
“I thought he was so kind,” Sylvia went on pitifully, “and he
seemed so nice at first, but lately he’s been different, and his manner
has been so funny. He—he looked at me in a horrid way yesterday,”
she confessed, “and held my hand tight, and when I tried to get
away, he laughed. But my contract’s signed,” she declared with a
wail of despair in her voice.
“Haven’t the principals of this place interfered?” Anne inquired.
“The matron, or whoever it is who’s supposed to look after you?”
“They think I’m going home,” confessed Sylvia in an abashed
voice. “I managed it so that they should think so.”
Anne rose, and with a terrified expression, the girl clung to her
hand.
“Oh! Miss Page,” she gasped. “You’re not going? I’m to sail to-
morrow night, and——”
“Don’t be frightened, you silly little thing. Of course you won’t sail
to-morrow, nor any other night. Give me the address of this man.”
Sylvia falteringly repeated it.
Anne wrote it down, and stooped to kiss her.
 “Unpack all those things, and put them tidy,” she said. “I haven’t
time to scold you now, but I’ll come back and do it thoroughly this
afternoon.”
The girl’s look of relief touched her, but she could scarcely
repress a smile as she turned at the door, to see her standing like a
penitent baby amongst all her finery.
“I wonder what I should have done with daughters?” she asked
herself, half humorously, as she stepped into a cab, outside.
The question was answered by a smile and a sigh that were
almost simultaneous.
Anne spent a busy morning. She went first to her solicitor, and
after an hour’s colloquy with him on the case of Sylvia Carfax, she
drove on to her brother’s house in Kensington. It stood in a highly
respectable square, and was one of the hundreds of dull substantial
edifices which came into existence during the mid-Victorian era.
Anne rang the bell, and stood waiting rather excitedly under the
stucco canopy supported by pillars.
Her present meeting with Hugh was divided from the last, by a
period of twenty years. It was odd to remember how little she knew
of this brother, her only near relative in the world. He would be much
changed, of course.
A sudden vivid recollection of the last time she had met him,
swept through her mind, as she stood waiting admittance. How
desolate she had been. How shy. How filled with the sense of being
an outsider, a forgotten guest, unbidden to the banquet of life!
The door opened, and it was Hugh himself who drew her over the
threshold, and welcomed her in the loud, kind voice she
remembered.
“We’ve been waiting for you all the morning,” he declared, “and I
rushed down when I heard the bell. Come in and let me look at you!
It’s impossible to see anything in this wretched foggy atmosphere.”
With his arm still round her shoulder, he pushed open the door of
a large room on the right of the hall.
“Here she is, Alice!” he exclaimed, as his wife rose from a sofa
near the fire.
“Why Anne, what have you done to yourself?”
 The words were uttered in amazement. Anne had slipped off her
heavy cloak, and stood laughing tremulously as she held her brother
by both hands, and noticed for the first time that his hair was white,
and his good-natured bronzed face lined and wrinkled. She turned
from him to greet her sister-in-law.
The slim little creature she remembered was a stout matron,
whose hair was just touched with grey.
Alice’s start of amazement as she gazed a moment before she
kissed her, was almost comic.
“Why, Anne, my dear, you’ve grown quite a beautiful woman!”
declared her brother, so simply that the tears sprang to Anne’s eyes.
“She’s grown younger, hasn’t she, Alice?” He looked at her with a
puzzled expression.
Anne laughed, and touched her hair. “But it’s your white hair that
—— And yet I don’t know. It’s you altogether! I never saw such a
change. You—— She looks like a great lady in a French picture,
doesn’t she, Alice? Court of one of the French kings. Louis the
Sixteenth, that sort of thing.”
Anne laughed again. “My dear boy. You make me embarrassed.
Don’t stare at me so,” she begged.
The pink colour sprang into her cheeks, and the shy deprecating
smile of François’ portrait crept for a moment to her lips.
“I’m just Anne—twenty years older than when you last saw me.”
“Well—it’s magic. I give it up,” declared Hugh.
“Where are the boys?” she asked, turning with a quick, eager
movement to her sister-in-law. “I want to see my nephews.”
“They’re out to-day. I’m so sorry. They’ve gone to lunch with
some relations of mine. But you’ll see them this evening. I let them
go because I knew that you would want to talk to Hugh,” Alice
answered. “You’ll excuse me a little while, won’t you? I must speak to
cook.”
Her voice—her tone of deference, marked Alice’s recognition of
the change in the woman she had once regarded as insignificant, a
poor meek creature to be treated with compassion and tolerance;
and her husband’s awkward laugh as she closed the door, was
sufficient indication that her altered attitude was not lost upon him.
 “She can’t help fussing about the servants. Old habits, you know,”
he said, turning to his sister. “For years she did all the housework,
and she can’t give it up.”
“But you’ve finished with work now, haven’t you, dear?” Anne
asked, as she sat down beside her brother on the sofa.
“Thanks to you.” Hugh glanced at her gratefully.
“That money was just what I wanted, Anne. It made me. I only
needed capital to develop the farm, and it came just at the right
moment. We owe everything to your generosity, dear. And now we’re
going to talk business. You’ve put me off in every letter, but I must
insist——”
Anne laid her hand quickly on his lips. “I won’t hear a word about
it!” she declared. “You’re not going to rob me of one of the greatest
delights of my life, Hugh? The power I once had to help my only
brother? You can’t be so unkind!”
Her tone of pained entreaty made him laugh. He kissed her
again.
“You dear absurd woman! Why haven’t you married, Anne?” he
exclaimed suddenly. “Some man’s been robbed of a wonderful wife.
It’s not fair of you!”
She smiled. “Tell me about the boys,” she urged.
A maid entered to announce that lunch was served, and during
the meal, the boys and their prospects were the chief topic of
conversation.
“Alice thinks them both geniuses, of course,” laughed her
husband. “But they’re only ordinary youths. I shall be quite satisfied if
they can just jog along.”
“Rupert has great talent,” his mother assured Anne. “Don’t listen
to Hugh. I’m sure he’ll make a splendid architect.”
“I’m sure he will,” she agreed sympathetically.
“You know we lost our little girl?” said Alice softly, when they
returned to the drawing-room.
Her voice suddenly drew Anne’s heart.
“The boys are dears, of course,” she added. “But I should love to
have had a daughter.”
Anne was silent a moment. Then with a sudden inspiration, she
thought of Sylvia.
 “Where’s your luggage?” inquired Hugh. “Bless my soul, I’d
forgotten it! You’re going to stay with us, Anne, of course?”
“Your room is all ready,” Alice assured her rather timidly.
“I was going back to-day, and coming to you later. But if I may
send for my things from the hotel, I should like to stay a little while.
There’s a child I know, a girl I must help out of a difficulty, and I find it
will take a little time.”
She told them Sylvia’s story, and noticed with satisfaction that
Alice seemed interested.
“Poor silly child!” she exclaimed. “She ought to be taken care of.
She ought to live in some nice family.”
Anne made a mental note, but at the moment said nothing.