’Mr. Rollo—­will you give quarter if I surrender at discretion?  Just to save you trouble—­and let me get home the quicker.’

In the next instant the gentleman stood by the lady’s side.  Well for him that he was a hunter, and that habit is a great thing; for he made no exclamations and showed no disturbance, though Wych Hazel in the woods at that time of night, was a thing to try most people’s command of words at least.  Only in the spring which brought him across the road he had spoken the one word “Hazel!” louder than an Indian would have done.  Then he stood beside her.  Wych Hazel herself—­bareheaded, without gloves, her little white evening cloak not around her shoulders, but rolled up into the smallest possible compass, and held down by her side.  She had been standing in the deepest depth of shadow under a low drooping hemlock, and now came out to meet him.  But she seemed to have no more words to give.  That something had happened, was very clear.  Rollo’s first move was to take the girl’s hand, and the second to inquire in a low voice how she came there.  The hand-touch was not in compliment, but such a taking-possession clasp as Hazel had felt from it before; one that carried, as a hand-clasp can, its guaranty of protection, guidance, defence.

Hazel did not answer at first—­only there went a shiver over her from head to foot; and her hand was as cold as ice.

‘I am very glad to find you, Mr. Rollo,’ she said in a sort of measured voice; he could not tell what was in it.—­’Will you walk home with me?’

Rollo’s answer was not in a hurry.  He first took from Wych Hazel her little bundle of the opera cloak, shook it out, and put it around her shoulders, drawing the fastening button at the throat; then taking the little cold hand in his clasp again, and with the other arm lingering lightly round her shoulders, he asked her “what had happened?”

People are different, as has been remarked.  There was nobody in the world that could have put the question to Wych Hazel as he put it, and afterwards she could recognize that.  Mr. Falkirk’s words would have been more anxious; Dr. Maryland’s would have been more astonished; and any one of Miss Hazel’s admirers would have made speeches of surprise and sympathy and offered service.  Rollo’s was a business question, albeit in its somewhat curt accentuation there lurked a certain readiness for action; and there was besides, though indefinably expressed, the assumption of a right to know and a very intimate personal concern in the answer.  How his eyes were looking at her the moonlight did not serve to shew; they were in shadow; yet even that was not quite hid from the object of them; and the arm that was round her was there, not in freedom-taking, but with the unmistakeable expression of shelter.  So he stood and asked her what had happened.

‘Thank you,’ she said in the same measured tone.  ’I am not cold—­I think.  But it is safe now.  Will you walk home very fast, please?  I promised Mr. Falkirk that I would be home by eleven!’—­There was an accent of real distress then.