She sat down on the back steps, her arms around her knees to think about the discovery she had just made.

It made her heart-sick because it added so immeasurably to the weight of Jack's misfortune.
"Oh, _why_ did it have to be ?" she demanded again of fate.

"It is too cruel that everything the dear boy wanted most should be denied him." With her thoughts centred gloomily on his injuries, it seemed almost an insult for the sun to shine or for any one to be happy, and she was in no mood to meet any one in a different humour from her own.

Added to her dull misery on Jack's account, was a baffled, disappointed feeling that she had not been the comfort to him she had hoped to be.

True, she was learning to give him the massage he needed with almost as skilful a touch as the nurse, but she could not see that she had eased his burden mentally, in the least, although she had tried faithfully to carry out the good friar's suggestion.