aid. "They will go without me."

"What if they do?" asked Mr. Kenyon. "I'll see you home."

Lesley looked amazed, as well she might, at this masterful way of
settling the question. And while she hesitated Maurice acted, as he
usually did.

He strode to the door and spoke to Miss Brooke. "I am just showing your
niece some of the books: I'll follow in a minute or two with her if
you'll kindly walk on. It won't take me more than a minute."

"Then we may as well wait," said Oliver's voice.

Lesley would have been very angry if she had known what happened then.
Mr. Kenyon, by means of energetic pantomime, conveyed to the quick
perceptions of Doctor Sophy a knowledge of the fact that Lesley was a
little agitated and overcome, and that he was soothing her. And that the
departure of the rest of the party would be a blessed relief.

Aunt Sophy was good-natured, and she had complete trust in Maurice
Kenyon.

"Don't stay more than a minute or two," she said. "We'll just walk on
then--Caspar and I. Mr. Trent is, of course, escorting your sister. Mrs.
Romaine will come with us, and you'll follow?"

"I am quite ready," said Lesley.

"All right," answered Maurice, easily, "I must first show you this
book." Then he returned to the library, and she heard the sounds of
retreating steps and voices as her father and his party left the
building.

"You have no book to show me--you had better come at once," Lesley said,
severely. But Mr. Kenyon arrested her.

"I assure you I have. Look here: the men clubbed together a little while
ago and presented your father's works to the library, all bound, you
see, in vellum. I need not mention that _he_ had not thought it worth
while to give his own books to the club."

He showed her the volumes with pride, as if the presentation had been
made to a member of his own family. Lesley touched the books with gentle
fingers and reverent eyes. "I have been reading 'The Unexplored,'" she
said.

"I knew you would! And I knew you would like it!--I am not wrong?"

"I like it very much. But it is all new to me--so new--I feel like Ione
when she first heard of the miseries of England--I have lived in an
enchanted world, where everything of that sort was kept from me;
so--_how_ could I understand?"

"I know! I know!--You make me doubly ashamed of myself. I have lived,
metaphorically, in dust and ashes ever since we had that talk together.
Miss Brooke, I must have seemed to you the most intolerable