corner where they had hemmed
her in. She had found an unoccupied sofa near the writing-table. The
pursuer was seized instantly with a desire to write letters. Mrs.
Tailleur went out and shivered on the veranda. His eyes followed her. In
passing she had turned her back on the screened hearth-place where Lucy
and his sister sat alone.

"Did you see that?" said Lucy.

"I did indeed," said Jane.

"It's awful that a woman should be exposed to that sort of thing. What
can her people be thinking of?"

"Her people?"

"Yes; to let her go about alone."

"I go about alone," said Jane pensively.

"Yes, but she's so good looking."

"Am _I_ not?"

"You're all right, Jenny; but you never looked like that. There's
something about her----"

"Is that what makes those men horrid to her?"

"Yes, I suppose so. The brutes!" He paused irritably. "It mustn't happen
again."

"What's the poor lady to do?" said Jane.

"She can't do anything. _We_ must."

"We?"

"I must. You must. Go out to her, Janey, and be nice to her."

"No, you go and say I sent you."

He strode out on to the veranda. Mrs. Tailleur sat with her hands in her
lap, motionless, and, to his senses, unaware.

"Mrs. Tailleur."

She started and looked up at him.

"My sister asked me to tell you that there's a seat for you in there, if
you don't mind sitting with us."

"But won't you mind me?"

"Not--not," said Lucy (he positively stammered), "not if you don't mind
us."

Mrs. Tailleur looked at him again, wide eyed, with the strange and
pitiful candour of distrust. Then she smiled incomprehensibly.

Her eyelids dropped as she slid past him to the seat beside Jane. He
noticed that she had the sudden, furtive ways of the wild thing aware of
the hunter.

"May I really?" said Mrs. Tailleur.

"Oh, _please_," said Jane.

As she spoke the man at the writing-table looked up and stared. Not at
Mrs. Tailleur this time, but at Jane. He stared with a wonder so
spontaneous, so supreme, that it purged him of offence.

He stared again (with less innocence) at Lucy as the young man gave way,
reverently, to the sweep of Mrs. Tailleur's gown. Lucy's face intimated
to him that he had made a bad mistake. The wretch admitted, by a violent
flush, that it was possible. Then his eyes turned again to Mrs.
Tailleur. It was as much as to say he had only been relying on the
incorruptible evidence of his senses.

Mrs. Tailleur sat down and breathed hard.

"How sweet of