"I wish there were something I could do," Griffiths murmured, a
little awkwardly. "It hurts me, Lady Cranston, to see you so upset."

She looked at him for a moment in faint surprise.

"Nobody can do anything," she bemoaned. "That is the unfortunate
part of it all."

He rose to his feet and was immediately conscious, as he always was
when he stood up, that there was a foot or two of his figure which
he had no idea what to do with.

"You wouldn't feel like a ride to-morrow morning, Lady Cranston?" he
asked, with a wistfulness which seemed somehow stifled in his rather
unpleasant voice. She shook her head.

"Perhaps one morning later," she replied, a little vaguely. "I
haven't any heart for anything just now."

He took a sombre but agitated leave of his hostess, and went out
into the twilight, cursing his lack of ease, remembering the things
which he had meant to say, and hating himself for having forgotten
them. Philippa, to whom his departure had been, as it always was,
a relief, was already leaning forward in her chair with her arm
around Helen's neck.

"I thought that extraordinary man would never go," she exclaimed,
"and I was longing to send for you, Helen. London has been such a
dreary chapter of disappointments."