'I am very grateful to you,' she said steadily; 'very. It is strange, but almost when I first saw you I felt that there was something ominous in you to me. My dream, in which I have been living, has never been so perfect since, and now I think it has gone. Don't look so grieved,' she cried, inexpressibly touched by his face, 'I am glad you told me all you thought. It will be a help to me. And as for poor Elvira,' she added, trying to smile for all her extreme paleness, 'tell Mr. Wallace I give her up. I am not vexed, I am not angry. Don't you think now we had better go back to Mrs. Stuart? I should like a rest with her before we all meet again.' She moved forward as she spoke, and it seemed to Kendal that her step was unsteady and that she was deadly white. He planted himself before her in the descending path, and held out a hand to her to help her. She gave him her own, and he carried it impetuously to his lips. 'You are nobleness itself!' he cried, from the depths of his heart. 'I feel as if I had been the merest pedant and blunderer--the most incapable, clumsy idiot.' She smiled, but she could not answer. And in a few more moments voices and steps could be heard approaching, and the scene was over. CHAPTER VI The Sunday party separated at Paddington on the night of the Nuneham expedition, and Wallace and Eustace Kendal walked eastward together. The journey home had been very quiet. Miss Bretherton had been forced to declare herself 'extremely tired,' and Mrs. Stuart's anxiety and sense of responsibility about her had communicated themselves to the rest of the party. 'It is the effect of my long day yesterday,' she said apologetically to Forbes, who hovered about her with those affectionate attentions which a man on the verge of old age pays with freedom to a young girl. 'It won't do to let the public see so much of me in future. But I don't want to spoil our Sunday. Talk to me, and I shall forget it.' Wallace, who had had his eyes about him when she and Eustace Kendal emerged from the wood in view of the rest of the party, was restless and ill at ease, but there was no getting any information, even by a gesture, from Kendal, who sat in his corner diligently watching the moonlight on the flying fields, or making every now and then some disjointed attempts at conversation with Mrs. Stuart. At the station Miss Bretherton's carriage was waiting; the party of gentlemen saw her and Mrs. Stuart, who insisted on taking her home, into it; the pale, smiling face bent forward; she waved her hand in response to the lifted hats, and she was gone. 'Well?' said Wallace, with a world of inquiry in his voice, as he and Kendal turned eastward. 'It has been an unfortunate business,' said Kendal abruptly. 'I never did a thing worse, I think, or spent a more painful half-hour.' Wallace's face fell. 'I wish I hadn't bored you with my confounded affairs,' he exclaimed. 'It was too bad!'