onately; but all she could find to say
was: "Dear--I know--indeed, indeed I know--believe me I know and
understand!" And all she could do was to gather the humbled woman into
her arms until, her grief dry-spent, Virginia raised her head and looked
at Shiela with strange, quenched, tearless eyes.

"We women are very helpless, very ignorant," she said, "even the worst
of us. And I doubt if in all our lives we are capable of the harm that
one man refrains from doing for an hour.... And that, I think, is our
only compensation.... What theirs may be I do not know.... Dear, I am
perfectly able to go, now.... I think I see your mother coming."

They walked together to the terrace where Mrs. Cardross had just arrived
in the motor; and Shiela, herself shaken, wondered at the serene poise
with which Virginia sustained ten minutes of commonplaces and then made
her final adieux, saying that she was leaving on the morning train.

"May we not see each other in town?" she added amiably; and, to Shiela:
"You will let me know when you come North? I shall miss you until you
come."

Mrs. Cardross sent her back in the motor, a trifle surprised at any
intimacy between Shiela and Virginia. She asked a frank question or two
and then retired to write to Mrs. Carrick, who, uneasy, had at last gone
North to find out what financial troubles were keeping both her husband
and her father so long away from this southland that they loved so well.

Hamil, who was to leave for the North with his aunt and Virginia early
next morning, returned from the forest about sundown, reeking as usual
of the saddle, and rested a moment against the terrace balustrade
watching Mrs. Cardross and Shiela over their tea.

"That boy is actually ill," said the sympathetic matron. "Why don't you
give him some tea, Shiela? Or would you rather have a little wine and a
biscuit, Garret--?"

"And a few pills," added Shiela gravely. "I found a box of odds and
ends--powders, pills, tablets, which he might as well finish--"

"Shiela! Garret is _ill!_"

Hamil, busy with his Madeira and biscuit, laughed. He could not realise
he was on the eve of leaving, nor could Shiela.

"Never," said he to the anxious lady, "have I felt better in my life;
and I'm sure it is due to your medicines. It's all very well for Shiela
to laugh at quinine; mosquitoes don't sting her. But I'd probably be an
item in one of those phosphate beds by this time if you hadn't taken
care of me."

Shiela