willingly die--if only I could do anything.... Ever since I
first saw you."

He said all this in a distracted way, with his eyes going about the
garden for the possible apparition of Sir Isaac, and all the time his
sense of possible observers made him assume an attitude as though he was
engaged in the smallest of small talk. Her colour quickened at the
import of his words, and emotion, very rich and abundant emotion, its
various factors not altogether untouched perhaps by the spirit of
laughter, lit her eyes. She doubted a little what he was saying and yet
she had anticipated that somehow, some day, in quite other
circumstances, Mr. Brumley might break into some such strain.

"You see," he went on with a quality of appeal in his eyes, "there's so
little time to say things--without possible interruption. I feel you are
in difficulties and I want to make you understand----We----Every
beautiful woman, I suppose, has a sort of right to a certain sort of
man. I want to tell you--I'm not really presuming to make love to
you--but I want to tell you I am altogether yours, altogether at your
service. I've had sleepless nights. All this time I've been thinking
about you. I'm quite clear, I haven't a doubt, I'll do anything for you,
without reward, without return, I'll be your devoted brother, anything,
if only you'll make use of me...."

Her colour quickened. She looked around and still no one appeared. "It's
so kind of you to come like this," she said. "You say things--But I
_have_ felt that you wanted to be brotherly...."

"Whatever I _can_ be," assured Mr. Brumley.

"My situation here," she said, her dark frankness of gaze meeting his
troubled eyes. "It's so strange and difficult. I don't know what to do.
I don't know--what I _want_ to do...."

"In London," said Mr. Brumley, "they think--they say--you have been
taken off--brought down here--to a sort of captivity."

"I _have_," admitted Lady Harman with a note of recalled astonishment in
her voice.

"If I can help you to escape----!"

"But where can I escape?"

And one must admit that it is a little difficult to indicate a correct
refuge for a lady who finds her home intolerable. Of course there was
Mrs. Sawbridge, but Lady Harman felt that her mother's disposition to
lock herself into her bedroom at the slightest provocation made her a
weak support for a defensive fight, and in addition that boarding-house
at Bournemouth did not attract her. Yet what other wall in