‘Would I?’ said Rollo.

‘And how came you to be there at all at that time of night?’ said Mr. Falkirk.

‘On my way from the cars.’

‘Cars, where?’

‘Henderson.’

‘Walk from Henderson!’ said Mr. Falkirk.

‘Save time.  I wanted to be here to-day.’  The answers were all short and grave, as a man speaks who has no words that he wants to say.

‘And Mr. Rollo thought’, said Hazel, looking up, ’that it was better for me to come home from Dr. Maryland’s than from the woods.  And—­when he spoke of it—­I supposed you would say that too, Mr. Falkirk.’

But Mr. Falkirk vouchsafed no corroboration of this opinion.

‘Did I do well, sir?’ she said a little eagerly, but meaning now the whole night’s work.  ’Did I do ill?  Was I a bit like your old ideal—­“a woman” and “brave”?  Or was I only a girl, and very foolish?’ They were so silent, these men!—­it tried her.  Did they, in their worldly wisdom, see any better way out of her hard places, than her seventeen years’ inexperience had found, at such a cost?  The brown eyes looked searchingly at Mr. Falkirk, and again for an instant went beyond him to Mr. Rollo.

‘Answer, Mr. Falkirk!’ said the younger man.

‘My dear,’ said Wych Hazel’s guardian, ’if I had been a quarter as much a man as you have proved yourself a woman, your bravery never would have been so tried.’

‘And the bravery was as much as the womanliness!’ said the other, in the short, terse way of all his words this afternoon; no air of compliment whatever hanging about the words.

She answered with only a deep flush of pleasure, and eyes that went down now, and a smile just playing round the corners of her mouth—­the first that had been there that afternoon.  It may be remarked that there was no pleasure in either of the other faces.

‘Who knows about this?’ said Mr. Falkirk, suddenly.

‘Nobody,’ said Rollo.

‘Not Miss Maryland?’

‘I could answer for her; but she knows nothing.’

Wych Hazel looked up, listening.  It was interesting to hear somebody else talk now.  Talk was stayed, however.  Both men were thinking; their thoughts did not run easily into spoken words.  Or not while she was present; for after a sudden excursion up stairs to see what notes and messages might need attention, on returning she found the two deep in talk; Rollo seated near the head of Mr. Falkirk’s couch, and bending towards him.  He sprang up as Wych hazel came in and took leave; shaking Mr. Falkirk’s hand cordially and then clasping Wych Hazel’s.  For the first time then a gleam of his usual gay humour broke on his lips and in his eye, as he said softly: 

‘I should have made you speak before that!’

CHAPTER XXIII.

KITTY FISHER.

Nothing but the most superb propriety was to be expected at Mrs. Powder’s; nevertheless Wych Hazel went escorted by Prim and Rollo in Dr; Maryland’s rockaway.  Dr. Maryland himself had been persuaded to the dinner, and it was on his arm Miss Kennedy made her entrance upon the company.  Something unlike anything the doctor had ever taken charge of before,—­in a dress of tea-rose colour this time, and with only tea-roses for trimming.