thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen
about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has
always waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and
then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them
away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all
the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away
from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over
again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out
for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; he
has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop
stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth
has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The
Bishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened to
shake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it
would be cruelly hard on him."

"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?"

"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--since
the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know
what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid
and muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ remember
what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in
absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such
odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He
often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones,
all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I
think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out
of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?"

"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for
you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a
lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words."

"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only
one, that perhaps there may be some more?"

There was a long pause.

"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm _sure_ he
will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a
great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him."

Fay turned her quivering face towards him.

"Oh, no. I haven't done that.