dy's friend, really--as Mr. Kane would
have counted friendship. She thought him dear, she thought him good, and
yet she hardly wanted him, would hardly miss him if he were not there.
He touched her, more deeply than she perhaps quite knew, and yet she
seemed to have nothing for him. So she gave up any explicit declaration,
only turning her eyes on him and smiling at him again through her
rain-dimmed lashes, as they went down the winding road together.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was Althea who, during the next few days, while Gerald with the
greatest tact and composure made his approaches, was most unconscious of
what was approaching her. Everybody else now saw quite clearly what
Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the
bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of
her. She had feared--sickeningly--with a stiffening of her whole nature
to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady
Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was
going to be her friend, and then--this in the two or three days that
followed Gerald's talk with Helen--that he was going to be a dear one.
She had only adjusted her mind to this grave joy and wondered, with all
the perplexity of her own now recognised love, whether it could prove
more than a very tremulous joy, when the final revelation came upon her.
It came, and it was still unexpected, one afternoon when she and Gerald
sat in the drawing-room together. It was very warm, and they had come
into the cooler house after tea to look at a book that Gerald wanted to
show her. It had proved to be not much of a book after all, and even
while standing with him in the library, while he turned the musty
leaves for her and pointed out the funny old illustrations he had been
telling her of, Althea had felt that the book was only a pretext for
getting her away to himself. He had led her back to the drawing-room and
he had said, 'Don't let's go out again, it's much nicer here. Please sit
here and talk to me.'

It was just the hour, just such an afternoon as that on which poor
Franklin had arrived; Althea thought of that as she and Gerald sat down
on the same little sofa where she and Franklin had sat. And, in a swift
flash of association, she remembered that Franklin had wanted to kiss
her, and had kissed her. They had left Franklin under the limes with
Helen; he had been reading something to Helen out of a pam