might now have been a murderer: How awful!
Only one had spoken; but he could have killed them both! And the word
was true, and was in all mouths--all low common mouths, day after day, of
his own daughter's child! The ghastliness of this thought, brought home
so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have
bent them.

From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever
more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering
voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more
sickening. He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:
How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of
those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel
untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
tarnished.

He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in
their minds. Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
play to them. He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
ran from companionship with any man. On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made
his appearance after dinner. He had so little to say that it was
difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for
his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her. 'He admires
her,' he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the
character of this man, who had lived such a roving life. 'Is he--can he
be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would think. 'Oh, that I
should have to hope like this that some good man would marry her--my
little Nollie, a child only the other day!'

In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour
when she was back from her hospital. That little black-walled room with
its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him. And Leila soothed him,
innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps
conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
li