“Please don’t move,” she said.

He looked at her.  Although his was not what may be called a sympathetic temperament, he was not without a certain knowledge of women; superficial, perhaps.  But most men of his type have seen them in despair; and since he was not related to this particular despair, what finer feelings he had were the more easily aroused.  It must have been clear to her then that she had lost the power to dissemble, all the clearer because of Mr. Pembroke’s cheerfulness.

“I wasn’t going to sleep,” he assured her.  “Circumstantial evidence is against me, I know.  Where’s Abby? reading French literature?”

“I haven’t seen her,” replied Honora.

“She usually goes to bed with a play at this hour.  It’s a horrid habit —­going to bed, I mean.  Don’t you think?  Would you mind showing me about a little?”

“Do you really wish to?” asked Honora, incredulously.

“I haven’t been here since my senior year,” said Mr. Pembroke.  “If the old General were alive, he could probably tell you something of that visit—­he wrote to my father about it.  I always liked the place, although the General was something of a drawback.  Fine old man, with no memory.”

“I should have thought him to have had a good memory,” she said.

“I have always been led to believe that he was once sent away from college in his youth,—­for his health,” he explained significantly.  “No man has a good memory who can’t remember that.  Perhaps the battle of Gettysburg wiped it out.”

Thus, in his own easy-going fashion, Mr. Pembroke sought to distract her.  She put on a hat, and they walked about, the various scenes recalling incidents of holidays he had spent at Highlawns.  And after a while Honora was thankful that chance had sent her in this hour to him rather than to Mrs. Kame.  For the sight, that morning of this lady in her dressing-gown over the stairway, had seemingly set the seal on a growing distaste.  Her feeling had not been the same about Mrs. Rindge:  Mrs. Kame’s actions savoured of deliberate choice, of an inherent and calculating wickedness.

Had the distraction of others besides himself been the chief business of Mr. Pembroke’s life, he could not have succeeded better that afternoon.  He must be given this credit:  his motives remain problematical; at length he even drew laughter from her.  The afternoon wore on, they returned to the garden for tea, and a peaceful stillness continued to reign about them, the very sky smiling placidly at her fears.  Not by assuring her that Hugh was unusual horseman, that he had passed through many dangers beside which this was a bagatelle, could the student of the feminine by her side have done half so well.  And it may have been that his success encouraged him as he saw emerging, as the result of his handiwork, an unexpectedly attractive—­if still somewhat serious-woman from the gloom that had enveloped her.  That she should still have her distrait moments was but natural.