cried, inexpressibly touched by his face, 'I am glad you told me all you
thought. It will be a help to me. And as for poor Elvira,' she added,
trying to smile for all her extreme paleness, 'tell Mr. Wallace I give
her up. I am not vexed, I am not angry. Don't you think now we had better
go back to Mrs. Stuart? I should like a rest with her before we all meet
again.'

She moved forward as she spoke, and it seemed to Kendal that her step was
unsteady and that she was deadly white. He planted himself before her in
the descending path, and held 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