en when it was only Sue, she looked down--"when Paul
saved me from myself----"

"When you were too ill to know what you were doing, darling."

"He looked at me and said with a sort of smile, '_L'honneur pour moi_.'
Sue?"

Sue looked attention.

"You know how poor Maud bored us--I mean how she insisted on Paul's
religion as if it were something which gave him a sort of
_cachet_--something quite over _our_ heads?--and how father--oh, Sue, I
must say it--do you remember how father once shut her up by declaring
that Paul was too much of a gentleman to introduce unpleasant subjects?
It was only father's way, you know. He didn't mean any harm, and I do
think, don't you, that father was changed a little, that he was
different those last few weeks? He said to me once: 'There's more in it
than you think'. Anyway, Sue, he did like and admire Paul."

"Yes--yes, he did."

"Now I want to say something," Leo changed the subject, which each felt
to be a sad one. "Sue, what really--what I shall never forget, is, that
when the worst moment of all came, when Paul and I were together, all
alone, and I was ready--oh, I _was_ ready to fall into his arms if he
had held out his little finger--he didn't hold it. He stood there like a
statue. And I know, I _know_ what held him back. If all the world had
called Paul a good man, and he had preached goodness from morning to
night, it wouldn't have had the least effect, but when he said
'_L'honneur pour moi_'"--her tears overflowed, and Sue wept likewise....

They often wondered how much and how little had been suspected by Maud,
inducing her own line of action. In the light of her subsequent attitude
it seemed more than probable that she had either learnt or divined that
all was not as it appeared, but so cleverly had she kept up a show of
being in good spirits up to the close of the day which was to Leo like
the day of judgment, that nothing could be certain.

Sue could recall that after Leo had been seen to bed, obviously ill, on
her return to the house before dinner, Maud had expressed a sort of
satisfaction, pointing out that this accounted for the peculiarities of
her sister's behaviour throughout the day. "Really one is glad to know
it was _that_," she had exclaimed more than once.

She had also rallied Paul for his indifference on the subject. It
appeared he had been out with Leo, and on such a raw evening he might
have seen that it was rash and foolish of her not to keep within d