s is a secret between us; no
one else need ever know or suspect it!'

She rose as she concluded. The quiet dignity of her speech and bearing
brought back Leonard in some way to his sense of duty as a gentleman. He
began, in a sheepish way, to make an apology:

'I'm sure I beg your pardon, Stephen.' But again she held the warning
hand:

'There is no need for pardon; the fault, if there were any, was mine
alone. It was I, remember, who asked you to come here and who introduced
and conducted this melancholy business. I have asked you several things,
Leonard, and one more I will add--'tis only one: that you will forget!'

As she moved away, her dismissal of the subject was that of an empress to
a serf. Leonard would have liked to answer her; to have given vent to
his indignation that, even when he had refused her offer, she should have
the power to treat him if he was the one refused, and to make him feel
small and ridiculous in his own eyes. But somehow he felt constrained to
silence; her simple dignity outclassed him.

There was another factor too, in his forming his conclusion of silence.
He had never seen Stephen look so well, or so attractive. He had never
respected her so much as when her playfulness had turned to majestic
gravity. All the boy and girl strife of the years that had gone seemed
to have passed away. The girl whom he had played with, and bullied, and
treated as frankly as though she had been a boy, had in an instant become
a woman--and such a woman as demanded respect and admiration even from
such a man.

CHAPTER XII--ON THE ROAD HOME

When Leonard Everard parted from Stephen he did so with a feeling of
dissatisfaction: firstly, with Stephen; secondly, with things in general;
thirdly, with himself. The first was definite, concrete, and immediate;
he could give himself chapter and verse for all the girl's misdoing.
Everything she had said or done had touched some nerve painfully, or had
offended his feelings; and to a man of his temperament his feelings are
very sacred things, to himself.

'Why had she put him in such a ridiculous position? That was the worst
of women. They were always wanting him to do something he didn't want to
do, or crying . . . there was that girl at Oxford.'

Here he turned his head slowly, and looked round in a furtive way, which
was getting almost a habit with him. 'A fellow should go away so that he
wouldn't have to swear lies. Women were always w