"I sometimes wonder if you ever felt really badly hurt?"

"Once," he said quietly. "I think I have got over it."

"Ah!" she murmured. "I was afraid you would blame me, but now it seems
that Dick knew you better than I did. When he made you my trustee, he
said that you were too big to bear him malice."

The blood crept into George's face.

"After the first shock had passed, and I could reason calmly, I don't
think I blamed either of you. You had promised me nothing; Dick was a
brilliant man, with a charm everybody felt. By comparison, I was
merely a plodder."

Sylvia mused for a few moments.

"George," she said presently, "I sometimes think you're a little too
diffident. You plodders who go straight on, stopping for nothing,
generally gain your object in the end."

His heart beat faster. It looked as if she meant this for a hint.

"I can't thank you properly," she continued; "though I know that all
you undertake will be thoroughly carried out. I wish I hadn't been
forced to let you go so far away; there is nobody else I can rely on."

He could not tell her that he longed for the right to shelter her
always--it was not very long since the Canadian tragedy--but silence