“I see the car outside.  I’ll go and have a few words with Yerkes.”

The boy let him go in silence—­conscious on the one hand that he had himself played a mean part in their conversation, and on the other that Anderson, under this onset of sordid misfortune, was somehow more of a hero in his eyes, and no doubt in other people’s, than ever.

On his way downstairs Anderson ran into Delaine, who was ascending with an armful of books and pamphlets.

“Oh, how do you do?  Had only just heard you were here.  May I have a word with you?”

Anderson remounted the stairs in silence, and the two men paused, seeing no one in sight, in the corridor beyond.

“I have just read the report of the inquest, and should like to offer you my sincere sympathy and congratulations on your very straightforward behaviour—­” Anderson made a movement.  Delaine went on hurriedly—­

“I should like also to thank you for having kept my name out of it.”

“There was no need to bring it in,” said Anderson coldly.

“No of course not—­of course not!  I have also seen the news of your appointment.  I trust nothing will interfere with that.”

Anderson turned towards the stairs again.  He was conscious of a keen antipathy—­the antipathy of tired nerves—­to the speaker’s mere aspect, his long hair, his too picturesque dress, the antique on his little finger, the effeminate stammer in his voice.

“Are you going to-day?  What train?” he said, in a careless voice as he moved away.

Delaine drew back, made a curt reply, and the two men parted.

“Oh, he’ll get over it; there will very likely be nothing to get over,” Delaine reflected tartly, as he made his way to his room.  “A new country like this can’t be too particular.”  He was thankful, at any rate, that he would have an opportunity before long—­for he was going straight home and to Cumberland—­of putting Mrs. Gaddesden on her guard.  “I may be thought officious; Lady Merton let me see very plainly that she thinks me so—­but I shall do my duty nevertheless.”

And as he stood over his packing, bewildering his valet with a number of precise and old-maidish directions, his sore mind ran alternately on the fiasco of his own journey and on the incredible folly of nice women.

Delaine departed; and for two days Elizabeth ministered to Anderson.  She herself went strangely through it, feeling between them, as it were, the bared sword of his ascetic will—­no less than her own terrors and hesitations.  But she set herself to lift him from the depths; and as they walked about the mountains and the forests, in a glory of summer sunshine, the sanity and sweetness of her nature made for him a spiritual atmosphere akin in its healing power to the influence of pine and glacier upon his physical weariness.

On the second evening, Mariette walked into the hotel.  Anderson, who had just concluded all arrangements for the departure of the car with its party within forty-eight hours, received him with astonishment.