Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely, by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again. Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is fondling the blades of the unshorn grass. "Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?" "Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go." "Did you--did you happen to hear where he was staying?" "No, but"--with the greatest eagerness--"I can easily find out; nothing can be simpler." Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's voice. "You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose upon a--a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to gratify our--our idle curiosity." "But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this time--he does not know how--he is holding a hand of each of the trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?" He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks, stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her. "You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you; but as to helping us"--with a slight despairing shrug--"no one can do that; no one but God, and sometimes"--drawing a long, half-sobbing breath--"I think that it would pass even His power." CHAPTER XV. There are few things more difficult than when one's mind is full of the interests, cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to have to empty it suddenly of them, and refill it as suddenly with the entirely different, and perhaps discrepant interests, cares, and sorrows of an altogether alien set.