"I beg your pardon," said Harry, very red, as he raised his hat with his unoccupied hand; "but--but you really must let me carry it a little way for you." "I could not dream of it. Will you kindly give it me back this instant?" The girl was now good-humoured but very firm. She also had coloured, but her lips remained pale with fatigue. And she had very fine, fearless, grey eyes; but Harry found he could defy them in such a cause, so that they flashed with anger, and a foot--no very small one--stamped heartily on the pavement. "Did you hear what I said?" "I did; but----" "Give it to me!" "It's so heavy." "Give it to me!" He was wondering whether the bag was full of jewels, that she was in such a state about it, when all at once she grabbed at the handle he still hesitated to relinquish. The bag came open between them--and to his amazement he saw what it contained. Coals! A few fell out upon the pavement. Harry stooped, put them in again, and shut the bag. The young lady had moved away. She was walking on slowly ahead, and from her shoulders Harry feared that she was crying. He followed miserably but doggedly with the bag. She never looked round, and he never took his eyes from those broad, quivering shoulders. He felt an officious brute, but he had a certain fierce consolation too: he had got his way--he had not been beaten by a woman. And the heaviness of the bag, no longer to be wondered at, was in itself a justification; he also had changed it from hand to hand, and that more than once, before they came to the top of the hill. Here he followed his leader down a broad turning to the left, and thence along a smaller road until she stopped before the low wooden gate of a shabby little semi-detached house. Evidently this was her destination, and she was waiting for her bag. And now Harry lost confidence with every step he took, for the girl stood squarely with her back to the gate, and her eyes were dry but very bright, as though she meant to give him a bit of her mind before she let him go. "You may put it down here." Harry did so without a word. "Thank you. You are a stranger to Richmond, I think?" The thanks had sounded ironical, and the question took Harry aback. The grey eyes looked amused, and it was the last expression he had expected in them. "How did you know that?" he simply asked. "You are too sunburnt for Richmond, and--perhaps--too gallant!" "Or officious?" Her pleasant tone put him at his ease. "No; it was very kind of you, and one good turn deserves another. Were you looking for any particular road or house?" "Yes, for Sandringham, in the Greville Road." She stood aside and pointed to the name on the little wooden gate. "Why, this is it!" gasped Harry Ringrose. "Yes; this is Sandringham," said the girl, with a sort of shamefaced humour. "No wonder you are disappointed!" His eyes came guiltily from the little house with the big name. "Then are you Miss Lowndes?" he inquired aghast.