ait just a little.--You don't wish to tell your father?'

'I daren't tell him. I doubt whether I shall ever dare to tell him face
to face.'

'Don't think about it. Leave it to me.'

'I must have letters from you--but how? Perhaps, if you could
promise always to send them for the first post--I generally go to the
letter-box, and I could do so always--whilst father is ill.'

This was agreed upon. Nancy, whilst they were talking, took her hat from
the table; at the same moment, Tarrant's hand moved towards it. Their
eyes met, and the hand that would have checked her was drawn back.
Quickly, secretly, she drew the ring from her finger, hid it somewhere,
and took her gloves.

'Did you come by the back way?' Tarrant asked, when he had bitten his
lips for a sulky minute.

'Yes, as you told me.'

He said he would walk with her into Chancery Lane; there could be no
risk in it.

'You shall go out first. Any one passing will suppose you had business
with the solicitor underneath. I'll overtake you at Southampton
Buildings.'

Impatient to be gone, she lingered minute after minute, and broke
hurriedly from his restraining arms at last. The second outer door,
which Tarrant had closed on her entrance, surprised her by its
prison-like massiveness. In the wooden staircase she stopped timidly,
but at the exit her eyes turned to an inscription above, which she had
just glanced at when arriving: _Surrexit e flammis_, and a date. Nancy
had no Latin, but guessed an interpretation from the last word.
Through the little court, with its leafy plane-trees and white-worn
cobble-stones, she walked with bent head, hearing the roar of Holborn
through the front archway, and breathing more freely when she gained the
quiet garden at the back of the Inn.

Tarrant's step sounded behind her. Looking up she asked the meaning of
the inscription she had seen.

'You don't know Latin? Well, why should you? _Surrexit e flammis_, "It
rose again from the flames."

'I thought it might be something like that. You will be patient with my
ignorance?'

A strange word upon Nancy's lips. No mortal ere this had heard her
confess to ignorance.

'But you know the modern languages?' said Tarrant, smiling.

'Yes. That is, a little French and German--a very little German.'

Tarrant mused, seemingly with no dissatisfaction.

CHAPTER 4

In her brother's looks and speech Nancy detected something mysterious.
Undoubtedly he was keeping a secret fro