rstanding
friend who by excess of love had been betrayed into one lapse of
passionate outburst, and now wished only to soothe and comfort.

"She is a good sort," John Derringham thought, after her first visit.
"She will let me down easy in any case," and the ceasing of his anxiety
about his financial position comforted him greatly.

The next time she came and sat by his bed, a vision of fresh summer
laces and chiffons, he determined to make the position clear to her.

She always bent and kissed him with airy grace, then sat down at a
discreet distance. She felt he was not overanxious to caress her, and
preferred that the rendering of this impossible should come from her
side. Indeed, unless kisses were necessary to gain an end, she did not
care for them herself--stupid, contemptible things, she thought them!

John Derringham would have touched the hearts of most women as he lay
there, but Cecilia Cricklander had not this tiresome appendage, only the
business brain and unemotional sensibilities of her grandfather the pork
butcher. She did realize that her _fiance_, even there with the black
silk handkerchief wound round his head and his face and hands deadly
pale and fragile-looking, was still a most arrogant and
distinguished-looking creature, and that his eyes, with their pathetic
shadows dimming the proud glance in them, were wonderfully attractive.
But she was not touched especially by his weakness. She disliked
suffering and never wanted to be made aware of it.

John Derringham went straight into the subject which was uppermost in
his thoughts. He asked her to listen to him patiently, and stated his
exact financial situation. She must then judge if she found it worth
while to marry him; he would not deceive her about one fraction of it.

She laughed lightly when he had ended--and there was something which
galled him in her mirth.

"It is all a ridiculous nothing," she said. "Why, I can pay off the
whole thing with only the surplus I invest every year from my income!
Your property is quite good security--if I want any. We shall probably
have to do it in a business-like way; your house will be mine, of
course, but I will make you very comfortable as my guest!" and she
smiled with suitable playfulness. "Let the lawyers talk over these
things, not you and me--you may be sure mine will look after me!"

John Derringham felt the blood tingling in his ears. There was nothing
to take exception to in what she had said