beyed, looking up at him between the mouthfuls, with something like
adoration in her eyes.

When only a quarter of the mixture was left in the glass, she spoke:

"You're good to me," she said.

"Of course," he answered, and she laid her head on his shoulder and
slept at once.

So for a while he held her; and the watcher saw the strength and
judgment with which, a little later, he lowered the head to the pillow
so that the change of position never brought a quiver to the closed
eyelids; and, feeling romance as never before, she let a man play
sick-nurse to a maiden in bed without one censorious thought, and became
dimly aware for a moment in her drab life that love and modesty,
strength and beauty, safety and trust, spring to meet each other out of
the hidden root of things.

Dick laid the coverlet over the girl's shoulders, and walked out of the
room with a silence of which the woman achieved only an indifferent
imitation.

"And him with that bad limp, too," she said to herself afterwards, "and
them thick boots!"

"Breakfast," said Dick, in that low tone of his which never whispered.
"Leave her door open, and our voices will make her feel safe in her
sleep. Give me a towel and soap. I'll wash at the pump while you make
tea."

When he had washed, eaten many eggs and drunk much tea, Mrs. Brundage
thought her turn had come.

"Lady Adeline----" she began, but Dick turned on her so sudden a stare
that she stopped short. And no less suddenly he remembered.

The woman's softening had made him almost willing to trust her with a
condensed version of the facts. But her "Adeline" reminded him that he
was already committed to a safer course.

"Adelin_a_," he said, correcting her, "the Lady Adelin_a_, not Adeline.
Her mother, you see, Mrs. Brundage, was an Italian lady of high birth,
and her exalted family were very particular about the end of the name."

To gain time he finished his tea, and lighted his pipe--his first smoke
since he had left St. Albans.

"The father is an Englishman of title, who has long set his heart on a
great marriage for his daughter. For months, nay, years, the
high-spirited Lady Adelina has resisted the idea of yoking herself with
a man she dislikes and for whom she has no respect."

"Poor young lady," sighed Mrs. Brundage. The familiar tale was alive
with reality for her. "Now I'll lay the father's a baronet," she said.

"You have great insight, Mrs. Brundage. But it is worse than that: