He had brought that out with a sudden sigh, turning away to go on; so that we took a few steps more. "You've nothing to trouble about," I then freely remarked, "but that you _are_ as kind as the case requires and that you do help. I daresay that you'll find her even now on the terrace looking out for you." I patted his back, as we went a little further, but as I still preferred to stay away from the house I presently stopped again. "Don't fall below your chance. _Noblesse oblige._ We'll pull her through." "You say 'we,'" he returned, "but you do keep out of it!" "Why should you wish me to interfere with you?" I asked. "I wouldn't keep out of it if she wanted me as much as she wants you. That, by your own admission, is exactly what she doesn't." "Well, then," said Brissenden, "I'll make her go for you. I think I want your assistance quite as much as she can want mine." "Oh," I protested for this, "I've really given you already every ounce of mine I can squeeze out. And you know for yourself far more than I do." "No, I don't!"--with which he became quite sharp; "for you know _how_ you know it--which I've not a notion of. It's just what I think," he continued, facing me again, "you ought to tell me." "I'm a little in doubt of what you're talking of, but I suppose you to allude to the oddity of my being so much interested without my having been more informed." "You've got some clue," Brissenden said; "and a clue is what I myself want." "Then get it," I laughed, "from Mrs. Server!" He wondered. "Does she know?" I had still, after all, to dodge a little. "Know what?" "Why, that you've found out what she has to hide." "You're perfectly free to ask her. I wonder even that you haven't done so yet." "Well," he said with the finest stroke of unconsciousness he had yet shown me--"well, I suppose it's because I'm afraid of her." "But not too much afraid," I risked suggesting, "to be hoping at this moment that you'll find her if you go back to where most of our party is gathered. You're not going for tea--you're going for Mrs. Server: just of whom it was, as I say, you were thinking while you sat there with Lady John. So what is it you so greatly fear?" It was as if I could see through his dim face a sort of gratitude for my making all this out to him. "I don't know that it's anything that she may do to _me_." He could make it out in a manner for himself. "It's as if something might happen to her. It's what I told you--that she may break down. If you ask me how, or in what," he continued, "how can I tell you? In whatever it is that she's trying to do. I don't understand it." Then he wound up with a sigh that, in spite of its softness, he imperfectly stifled. "But it's something or other!" "What would it be, then," I asked, "but what you speak of as what I've 'found out'? The effort you distinguish in her is the effort of concealment--vain, as I gather it strikes you both, so far as _I_, in my supernatural acuteness, am concerned."