Presently he held out his hand in silence, and she as silently took it.  This was to Geoffrey the explanation of his whole life.  This was what men were made for.

Once as they stood resting the wind, which fortunately had been at their backs the entire trip, hurled her against him, where she remained an instant, too weak to move.  It was he who set her gently on her feet again.

The latter part of the journey she made almost wholly by his help, and when they stood before the piazza, she could not have managed the little step had he not virtually lifted her up.  He took her directly to the library and laid her on the sofa.  The fire, owing to the absence of McVay, had gone out.  It took Geoffrey some time with his benumbed hands to build a blaze.  When he turned toward her again she was sleeping like a child.

The sight was too much for his own weariness, and reflecting that McVay was either gone or still safe, he stretched himself on the hearth-rug and was soon asleep also.

IV

It was after two o’clock in the afternoon when he awoke.  He must have slept three hours.  He looked at the sofa and saw the girl still sleeping peacefully.  He almost wished that she would never awake to all the dreadful surprises that the house held for her.  Her eye-lashes curved long and dark on her cheek.  Geoffrey turned away quickly.

He had awakened with a sudden disagreeable conviction that people have been known to smother to death in closets.  He stole quietly from the library and ran up stairs with not a little anxiety.  Indeed so great was his dread that he would have been really relieved to see the closet door standing open as an immediate proof that it did not hide a corpse.  It was, however, locked as he had left it.  But as he hastened to undo it, a voice from within reassured him: 

[Illustration:  HE LET MCVAY OUT OF THE CLOSET]

“Well, where have you been all this time?”

“You may be thankful I’m back at all.  It did not look like it, at one time.”

“Where is Cecilia?”

“Down stairs asleep.”

McVay gave a little giggle.  “Ah,” he said, “I bet you have had the devil of a time.  I bet you wished once or twice that you had let me be the one to go.”

“It wasn’t child’s play.”

“Child’s play!  I rather think not.  These things are all well enough among men, but women!” he waved his hand; “so sensitive, so cloistered!”

“Your sister behaved nobly,” said Geoffrey severely.

“Bound to, Holland, bound to.  Still it must have been a shock.”

“It was a hard trip for any woman.”

McVay looked up.  “Oh,” he said, “I wasn’t speaking of the trip.  I meant about me.  What did she say?”

“She did not say anything.  She went to sleep.”

“She did not say anything when you told her I was booked for the penitentiary?”