eld out a hand to her to help her. She gave him
her own, and he carried it impetuously to his lips.

'You are nobleness itself!' he cried, from the depths of his heart. 'I
feel as if I had been the merest pedant and blunderer--the most
incapable, clumsy idiot.'

She smiled, but she could not answer. And in a few more moments voices
and steps could be heard approaching, and the scene was over.

CHAPTER VI

The Sunday party separated at Paddington on the night of the Nuneham
expedition, and Wallace and Eustace Kendal walked eastward together. The
journey home had been very quiet. Miss Bretherton had been forced to
declare herself 'extremely tired,' and Mrs. Stuart's anxiety and sense of
responsibility about her had communicated themselves to the rest of the
party.

'It is the effect of my long day yesterday,' she said apologetically to
Forbes, who hovered about her with those affectionate attentions which a
man on the verge of old age pays with freedom to a young girl. 'It won't
do to let the public see so much of me in future. But I don't want to
spoil our Sunday. Talk to me, and I shall forget it.'

Wallace, who had had his eyes about him when she and Eustace Kendal
emerged from the wood in view of the rest of the party, was restless and
ill at ease, but there was no getting any information, even by a gesture,
from Kendal, who sat in his corner diligently watching the moonlight on
the flying fields, or making every now and then some disjointed attempts
at conversation with Mrs. Stuart.

At the station Miss Bretherton's carriage was waiting; the party of
gentlemen saw her and Mrs. Stuart, who insisted on taking her home, into
it; the pale, smiling face bent forward; she waved her hand in response
to the lifted hats, and she was gone.

'Well?' said Wallace, with a world of inquiry in his voice, as he and
Kendal turned eastward.

'It has been an unfortunate business,' said Kendal abruptly. 'I never did
a thing worse, I think, or spent a more painful half-hour.'

Wallace's face fell. 'I wish I hadn't bored you with my confounded
affairs,' he exclaimed. 'It was too bad!'

Kendal was inclined to agree inwardly, for he was in a state of irritable
reaction; but he had the justice to add aloud, 'It was I who was the fool
to undertake it. And I think, indeed, it could have been done, but that
circumstances, which neither you nor I had weighed sufficiently, were
against it. She is in a nervous, shaken state, m