g her with a patient,
almost fatherly tenderness, and gradually her panic of fear passed.
She leaned against him with a comforting sense of security.

"I can't think how it is I'm so foolish," she told him. "You are good
to me, Blake. I feel so safe when I am with you."

His heart smote him, yet he bent and kissed her. "You're not quite
strong yet, dear," he said. "It takes a long time to get over all that
you had to bear last year."

"Yes," she agreed with a sigh. "And do you know I thought I was
so much stronger than I am? I actually thought that I shouldn't
mind--much--when he came. And yet I did mind--horribly. I--I--told him
about our engagement, Blake."

"Yes, dear," said Blake.

"Yes, I told him. And he laughed and offered his congratulations.
I don't think he cared," said Muriel, again with that curious,
inexplicable sensation of pain at her heart.

"Why should he?" said Blake.

She looked at him with momentary irresolution. "You know, Blake, I
never told you. But I was--I was--engaged to him for about a fortnight
that dreadful time at Simla."

To her relief she marked no change in Blake's courteously attentive
face.

"You need not have told me that, dear," he said quietly.

"No, I know," she answered, pressing his arm. "It wouldn't make any
difference to you. You are too great. And it was always a little bit
against my will. But the breaking with him was terrible--terrible. He
was so angry. I almost thought he would have killed me."

"My dear," Blake said, "you shouldn't dwell on these things. They are
better forgotten."

"I know, I know," she answered. "But they are just the very hardest of
all things to forget. You must help me, Blake. Will you?"

"I will help you," he answered steadily.

And the resolution with which he spoke was an unspeakable comfort to
her. Once more there darted across her mind the wonder at her father's
choice for her. How was it--how was it--that he had passed over this
man and chosen Nick?

Blake's own explanation of the mystery seemed to her suddenly weak and
inadequate. She simply could not bring herself to believe that in a
supreme moment he could be found wanting. It was unthinkable that the
giant frame and mighty sinews could belong to a personality that was
lacking in a corresponding greatness.

So she clung to her illusion, finding comfort therein, wholly blind to
those failings in her protector which to the woman who had loved him
from her earliest girlho