over Dutchman's Common last night,
and she lost her observation car. Mr. Somerfield took me up there this
afternoon, and I found a German hat. No one else got a thing, and, would
you believe it, those children over there tried to take it away from
me."

Her stepmother smiled faintly.

"I expect you are keeping the hat, dear," she observed.

"I should say so!" Nora assented.

Philippa held out her hand to the two young men who had been waiting to
take their leave.

"You must come and dine one night this week, both of you," she said. "My
husband will be home by the later train this evening, and I'm sure he
will be glad to have you."

"Very kind of you, Lady Cranston, we shall be delighted," Harrison
declared.

"Rather!" his companion echoed.

Nora led them away, and Helen, with a word of excuse, followed them.
Griffiths, who had also risen to his feet, came a little nearer to
Philippa's chair.

"And you, too, of course, Captain Griffiths," she said, smiling
pleasantly up at him. "Must you hurry away?"

"I will stay, if I may, until Miss Fairclough returns," he answered,
resuming his seat.

"Do!" Philippa begged him. "I have had such a miserable time in town.
You can't think how restful it is to be back here."

"I am afraid," he observed, "that your journey has not been successful."

Philippa shook her head.

"It has been completely unsuccessful," she sighed. "I have not been able
to hear a word about my brother. I am so sorry for poor Helen, too. They
were only engaged, you know, a few days before he left for the front
this last time."

Captain Griffiths nodded sympathetically.

"I never met Major Felstead," he remarked, "but every one who has
seems to like him very much. He was doing so well, too, up to that last
unfortunate affair, wasn't he?"

"Dick is a dear," Philippa declared. "I never knew any one with so many
friends. He would have been commanding his battalion now, if only he
were free. His colonel wrote and told me so himself."

"I wish there were something I could do," Griffiths murmured, a little
awkwardly. "It hurts me, Lady Cranston, to see you so upset."

She looked at him for a moment in faint surprise.

"Nobody can do anything," she bemoaned. "That is the unfortunate part of
it all."

He rose to his feet and was immediately conscious, as he always was when
he stood up, that there was a foot or two of his figure which he had no
idea what to do with.

"You wouldn't feel like a