"I? Oh, no!" Deleah said. She lifted her head from the frame over which she was stooping and looked calmly in the other woman's face; and Miss Forcus was struck with the perception of what a gentle dignity the girl had. A dignity less arresting, perhaps, than that she had admired so much in Francis's wife, but as effective. "Ah, well!" she smiled, immensely relieved, and overjoyed to find she might again take her protégée to her heart. "We shall see who there is that will be good and great enough for you, Deleah. He will have to be both to deserve you." "He will have to be both before I love him," Deleah said calmly, but with the colour in her cheeks. She put her head on one side to contemplate the lily growing so slowly under her fingers. "'I needs must love the highest when I see it,'" she said, half to herself. For while she had been talking and listening she had been thinking of that sacrifice which she had but now thought was demanded of her; and she had made up her mind not to make it. When Sir Francis came in, that evening, he found lying on his writing-table a little note with the signature "Deleah Day." "I hope you will excuse me that I have altered my mind and decided to go home at once," it ran. "I think I am wanted there. I hope you will not think I do not feel all your kindness. I do feel it with all my heart." Carrying this scanty missive open in his hand, Sir Francis sought his sister. "Yes, she has gone," that lady said. "She evidently wished it, and I drove her back to-day." "Then how about Reggie?" "You were quite deceived about Reggie, Francis. You are, indeed. Deleah will never marry Reggie. She as good as told me so. I never was more thankful. It would have been so terribly unsuitable. She told me she was writing to you. What does she say?" Sir Francis did not choose to see the hand held out for Deleah's little note. He folded it, and walked to the window, looking out thoughtfully upon the garden, his hands behind his back, the letter, held by its corner in one of them, waggling up and down. "She told me she had written," Miss Forcus said again, by way of reminder. "She simply says she has gone." "I shall miss her dreadfully. She is the dearest girl. Never have I seen one so lovely and so little vain." "She is too lovely to be vain," Sir Francis said. And at the tone rather than the words Miss Forcus lifted a startled head, and gazed and gazed upon her brother's stately back, upon the hands clasped behind it, holding the letter, waggling up and down, he would not let out of his keeping. Over another letter which Sir Francis received the next morning, he laughed as he read. He tossed it across the table to his sister. "What a fellow!" he said. "From Reggie? I wish you had not written to him to come home, Francis." "He's not coming. Don't alarm yourself. He says the Worradykes have turned up at Nice--" "They followed him! They've no doubt taken Daisy. I would stake my existence they've taken Daisy!"