'Yes,' murmured Miss Entwhistle into her handkerchief, 'yes--you're quite right, Mr. Wemyss--one ought--it would be more--more heroic. But then if one--if one has loved some one very tenderly--as I did my dear brother--and Lucy her most precious father----' She broke off and wiped her eyes. 'Perhaps,' she finished, 'you haven't ever loved anybody very--very particularly and lost them.' 'Oh,' breathed Lucy at that, and moved still closer to him. Wemyss was deeply injured. Why should Miss Entwhistle suppose he had never particularly loved anybody? He seemed, on looking back, to have loved a great deal. Certainly he had loved Vera with the utmost devotion till she herself wore it down. He indignantly asked himself what this maiden lady could know of love. But there was Lucy's little hand, so clinging, so understanding, nestling in his. It soothed him. There was a pause. Then he said, very gravely, 'My wife died only a fortnight ago.' Miss Entwhistle was crushed. 'Ah,' she cried, 'but you must forgive me----' V Nevertheless he was not able to persuade her to join him, with Lucy, in a trip abroad. She was tirelessly concerned to do and say everything she could that showed her deep sympathy with him in his loss--he had told her nothing beyond the bare fact, and she was not one to read about inquests--and her deep sense of obligation to him that he, labouring under so great a burden of sorrow of his own, should have helped them with such devotion and unselfishness in theirs; but she wouldn't go abroad. She was going, she said, to her little house in London with Lucy. 'What, in August?' exclaimed Wemyss. Yes, they would be quiet there, and indeed they were both worn out and only wished for solitude. 'Then why not stay here?' asked Wemyss, who now considered Lucy's aunt selfish. 'This is solitary enough, in all conscience.' No, they neither of them felt they could bear to stay in that house. Lucy must go to the place least connected in her mind with her father. Indeed, indeed it was best. She did so understand and appreciate Mr. Wemyss's wonderful and unselfish motives in suggesting the continent, but she and Lucy were in that state when the idea of an hotel and waiters and a band was simply impossible to them, and all they wished was to creep into the quiet and privacy of their own nest,--'Like wounded birds,' said poor Miss Entwhistle, looking up at him with much the piteous expression of a dog lifting an injured paw. 'It's very bad for Lucy to be encouraged to think she's a wounded bird,' said Wemyss, controlling his disappointment as best he could. 'You must come and see us in London and help us to feel heroic,' said Miss Entwhistle, with a watery smile. 'But I can come and see you much better and easier if you're here,' persisted Wemyss.