"Let me at least stay until Keen comes to you." But he replied with a gesture which showed her further argument was useless, and she obeyed him without another word. Ford had meanwhile gone in search of Keen and the carrying-chair, so that when Francis entered he was quite alone. He did not pause, but walked straight across the hall and up the stairs. When Keen, who had been reading the local paper over a quiet pipe in the kitchen yard, arrived in all haste in answer to the summons, he failed at first to find his master, but then he saw him and hurried to his side. Francis was standing at the head of the staircase as though he had stayed to rest a moment, and his eyes were fixed on a picture on the wall. He paid no heed to his servant's murmur of regret that he should not have been at hand when needed--he did not seem to hear. Then his lips moved. "Poor Rip!" he said, almost under his breath. "I know--now--what you must have felt--and I pity you----" Keen, quite uncomprehending, followed the direction of his glance, and remarked with polite jocularity-- "Looks as if he wanted a new suit of clothes rather badly, sir; doesn't he, sir?" Francis raised his head, and took the man's proffered arm; and as they moved away he said slowly-- "I think, Keen, that it was more than a suit of clothes he wanted--something much more than that." CHAPTER XXII FRIENDSHIP "Where are they now--the friends I loved so well? My outstretched hands clutch only empty air! I call on those who loved me--Like a knell The silence echoes to my question--Where?" Isabella was sitting in her favourite place, a writing-board on her knees, a pen in her hand. On a low table beside her lay a pile of manuscript and several books, but the sheet of paper in front of her was blank. She had intended to work, but for once her mind refused to centre itself upon the task in hand. It was not often that she allowed her thoughts to tempt her to idleness, for experience had taught her that they were apt to lead far away from the straight grey road of the Actual into the shadowy realms of Might-Have-Been, and along paths paved with pain and bordered with regret. But to-day as she sat there old memories crowded so thickly upon her that she could not drive them back, old scenes appeared before her mental vision blotting out the well-loved and familiar view of heath and sky and sea. There seemed to be no particular reason why the past should call to her so insistently to-day; there was, so far as she knew, nothing to account for it, nothing had happened to remind her particularly of the girlhood which lay so far behind her, and of bygone days when the hours had been all too short for the joy they had contained.