Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/157

 "Men can't. We must have several spare rooms, otherwise we could show no other hospitality. Besides as dear Sir Ian says, Miss Verney is proud. I think, if we ask her to stop a week or two longer, it's all we can do in justice to others."

"I will arrange something, and let you know at once," said Sir Ian. "But whatever we decide to do, my name must be kept out of the thing. Neither Miss Verney nor any one else must know."

"I quite understand," Mrs. Haynes assured him, wisdom and sympathy beaming from her rather bald looking eyes. "And are you really going to leave us shortly?"

"Almost at once," he said. "I—feel I must go, for a time at all events."

Again Mrs. Haynes quite understood and sympathized. She was sure that a change would do Sir Ian worlds of good, but she hoped that it might not be so very long before he felt able to come back to live in his own home and to the friends who had never valued him more than they did to-day.

"I don t know—I don't know," said Sir Ian. "Just now, I feel as if—I could never think of Friars' Moat as home again. But perhaps some time" he broke off, and held out his hand. "Good-bye. Good-bye to you both. I will write—about Miss Verney—before night."

Out of doors he walked with his head held high, as