Joan swung round, her face grown white, her eyes burning with fire.  She saw only Jenny Prask.

“I hope I don’t intrude, miss,” said Jenny respectfully.  “I came to find a book.”

The blood flowed back into Joan’s cheeks.

“Certainly, Jenny, take what you like,” said Joan, and she draped the curtains across the window.

“Thank you, miss.”

Jenny chose a book from the case upon the table and without a glance at Joan or at the window, went out of the room again.  Joan watched her go.  After all, what had Jenny seen?  A girl whose home was there, drawing the curtains close.  That was all.  Joan shook her anxiety off.  Jenny had left the door of the library open and some one came running down the stairs whistling as she ran.  Miranda Brown dashed into the room struggling with a pair of gloves.

“Oh, how I hate gloves in this weather!” she cried.  “Well, here I am, Joan.  You wanted to speak to me before the others had finished powdering their noses.  What is it?”

“I want you to help me.”

“Of course I will,” Miranda answered cheerily.  “How?”

Joan closed the door and returned to Miranda, who, having drawn the gloves over her arm, was now struggling with the buttons.

“I want you, when we reach Harrel——­”

“Yes.”

“To lend me your motor-car for an hour.”

Miranda turned in amazement towards her friend.  But one glance at her face showed that the prayer was made in desperate earnest.  Miranda Brown caught her friend by the arm.

“Joan!”

“Yes,” Joan Whitworth answered, nodding her head miserably.  “That’s the help I want and I want it dreadfully.  Just for an hour—­no more.”

“Joan, my dear—­what’s the matter?” asked Miranda gazing into Joan Whitworth’s troubled face.

“I don’t want you to ask me,” the girl answered.  “I want you to help me straight off without any questions.  Otherwise——­” and Joan’s voice shook and broke, “otherwise—­oh, I don’t know what will happen to me!”

Miranda put her arm round Joan Whitworth’s waist.  “Joan!  You are in real trouble!”

“For the first time!” said Joan.

“Can’t I——?”

“No,” Joan interrupted.  “There’s only the one way, Miranda.”

She sat down upon a couch at Miranda’s side and feverishly caught her hand.  “Do help me!  You can’t tell what it means to me!...  And I should hate telling you!  Oh, I have been such a fool!”

Joan’s face was quivering, and so deep a compunction was audible in her voice, so earnest a prayer was to be read in her troubled eyes, that Miranda’s doubt and anxiety were doubled.

“I don’t know what I shall do, if you don’t help me,” Joan said miserably as she let go of Miranda.  Her hands fluttered helplessly in the air.  “No, I don’t know!”

Miranda was thoroughly disturbed.  The contrast between the Joan she had known until this week, good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with herself and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this lovely girl, troubled to the heart’s core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.