A quiet woman entered, simply dressed in black merino. Her white linen collar and cuffs gave her the look of a hospital nurse. Her dark hair, neatly parted, was smoothly coiled around her head. She came in, deferentially; yet with a quiet dignity of manner. "I have come to pour your tea, my lord," she said. "Lady Ingleby is not well, and fears she must remain in her room. She asks me to give you these papers." Then the Earl of Airth and Monteith rose to his feet, and held out his hand. "I think you must be Mrs. O'Mara," he said. "I am glad to meet you, and it is kind of you to give me tea. I have heard of you before; and I believe I saw you yesterday, on the steps of your pretty house, as I drove up the avenue. Will you allow me to tell you how often, when we stood shoulder to shoulder in times of difficulty and danger, I had reason to respect and admire the brave comrade I knew as Sergeant O'Mara?" * * * * * Before quitting Shenstone, Jim Airth sat at Myra's davenport and wrote a letter, leaving it with Mrs. O'Mara to place in Lady Ingleby's hands as soon as he had gone. "I do not wonder you felt unable to see me again. Forgive me for all the grief I have caused, and am causing, you. I shall go abroad as soon as may be; but am obliged to remain in town until I have completed work which I am under contract with my publishers to finish. It will take a month, at most. "If you want me, Myra--I mean if you _need_ me--I could come at any moment. A wire to my Club would always find me. "May I know how you are? "Wholly yours, "Jim Airth." To this Lady Ingleby replied on the following day. "DEAR JIM, "I shall always want you; but I could never send unless the coming would mean happiness for you. "I know you decided as you felt right, "I am quite well. "God bless you always. "MYRA." CHAPTER XX A BETTER POINT OF VIEW In the days which followed, Jim Airth suffered all the pangs which come to a man who has made a decision prompted by pride rather than by conviction. It had always seemed to him essential that a man should appear in all things without shame or blame in the eyes of the woman he loved. Therefore, to be obliged suddenly to admit that a fatal blunder of his own had been the cause, even in the past, of irreparable loss and sorrow to her, had been an unacknowledged but intolerable humiliation. That she should have anything to overlook or to forgive in accepting himself and his love, was a condition of things to which he could not bring himself to submit; and her sweet generosity and devotion, rather increased than soothed his sense of wounded pride.