Lily reddened:  “It lies with me, Miss West—­the initiative.  I mean—­” She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go on,—­how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from such composure as this young girl already displayed.

“You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville,” said Valerie, gently.

“Yes—­I did, Miss West.  You will surely understand—­and forgive me—­if I say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety.”

“Why?”

The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained silent.  But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words to use in this one.

After a moment Valerie’s eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task: 

“Miss West,” she said, “what I have to say is not going to be very agreeable to either of us.  It is going to be painful perhaps—­and it is going to take a long while to explain—­”

“It need not take long,” said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her stitches; “it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father and mother do not wish your brother to marry me.”

She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily’s: 

“I promise not to marry him,” she said.  “You are perfectly right.  He belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world.”

She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile: 

“I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to draw him out of it....  And I hope that you will not be anxious any more.”

She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu.

“Miss West,” she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying, “I—­scarcely dare thank you—­for what you have said—­for—­my—­brother’s—­sake—­”

Valerie laughed:  “I would do much more than that for him, Mrs. Collis....  Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to serve him.”

Lily’s gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over it: 

“You are so generous, so sweet about it!” she said unsteadily.  “And I look into your face and I know you are good—­good—­all the way through—­”

Valerie laughed again: 

“There isn’t any real evil in me....  And I am not astonishingly generous—­merely sensible.  I knew from the first that I couldn’t marry him—­if I really loved him,” she added, under her breath.

They were at the door now.  Lily passed out into the entry, halted, turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly around the girl.