Again that past tense, that indication that in his absence---- Warrender felt his head grow giddy with too much delight. "I was afraid to come too often, lest you should think me--importunate." "How so?" she said simply. "You have been like a young brother ever since---- How could I think you other than kind? The only thing is that you do too much for me. I ought to be trying to walk alone." "Why, while I am here?" cried the young man; "asking nothing better, nothing half so good as to be allowed to do what I can,--which, after all, is nothing." She gave a slight glance at him under her eyelids, with a faint dawning of surprise at the fervour of his tone. "The world which people say is so hard is really very kind," she said. "I never knew till now how kind--at least when one has a great evident claim upon its sympathy,--or pity, should I say? Those who find it otherwise are perhaps those whose troubles cannot be made public, and yet who expect their fellow-creatures to divine." Warrender was sadly cast down to be considered only as the world, a type, so to speak, of mankind in general, kind to those whose claims were undeniable. He replied with a swelling heart, "There must always be individuals who divine, though perhaps they may not dare to show their sympathy,--ah, don't say pity, Lady Markland!" "You humour me," she said, "because you know I love to talk. But pity is very sweet; there is a balm in it to those who are wounded." "Sympathy is better. "'Mighty love would cleave in twain The lading of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him.'" "Ah," she cried, with a glimmer in her eyes, "if you go to the poets, Mr. Warrender! And that is more than sympathy. What did he call it himself? 'Such a friendship as had mastered time.'" "Mamma, mamma, look here!" came in advance of his appearance the voice of Geoff. He came panting, flying round the other angle of the terrace, with his arms full of books. And here, as if it were a type of all that was coming, the higher intercourse, the exchange of thought, the promotion of the man over the child, came suddenly to an end. CHAPTER XVII.