Cocker's for was something she
could only have described as the common fairness of a last word. Her
actual last word had been, till it should be superseded, that she
wouldn't forsake her other friend, and it stuck to her through thick and
thin that she was still at her post and on her honour. This other friend
had shown so much beauty of conduct already that he would surely after
all just re-appear long enough to relieve her, to give her something she
could take away. She saw it, caught it, at times, his parting present;
and there were moments when she felt herself sitting like a beggar with a
hand held out to almsgiver who only fumbled. She hadn't taken the
sovereigns, but she _would_ take the penny. She heard, in imagination,
on the counter, the ring of the copper. "Don't put yourself out any
longer," he would say, "for so bad a case. You've done all there is to
be done. I thank and acquit and release you. Our lives take us. I
don't know much--though I've really been interested--about yours, but I
suppose you've got one. Mine at any rate will take _me_--and where it
will. Heigh-ho! Good-bye." And then once more, for the sweetest
faintest flower of all: "Only, I say--see here!" She had framed the
whole picture with a squareness that included also the image of how again
she would decline to "see there," decline, as she might say, to see
anywhere, see anything. Yet it befell that just in the fury of this
escape she saw more than ever.

He came back one night with a rush, near the moment of their closing, and
showed her a face so different and new, so upset and anxious, that almost
anything seemed to look out of it but clear recognition. He poked in a
telegram very much as if the simple sense of pressure, the distress of
extreme haste, had blurred the remembrance of where in particular he was.
But as she met his eyes a light came; it broke indeed on the spot into a
positive conscious glare. That made up for everything, since it was an
instant proclamation of the celebrated "danger"; it seemed to pour things
out in a flood. "Oh yes, here it is--it's upon me at last! Forget, for
God's sake, my having worried or bored you, and just help me, just _save_
me, by getting this off without the loss of a second!" Something grave
had clearly occurred, a crisis declared itself. She recognised
immediately the person to whom the telegram was addressed--the Miss
Dolman of Parade Lodge to whom Lady Bradeen had wired,