Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/159

 was as if he could not look away; but at last he did. He bent his eyes to the ground, and stood prodding the grass with the ash stick he carried.

"I meant to write before I went," he said. But he did not say which one of the two was to have been the recipient of the letter.

"I—I suppose you wouldn't come and dine—just with Terry and me?" Maud hesitated. "You know how glad we should be if"

"You are very good," he answered, with gratitude which struggled against constraint, "but I—can't. I'm not fit—you'll understand. You'll both understand."

"Yes, we understand," said Terry, speaking for the first time, her eyes very gentle and sweet. He looked up at her again, once more with a desperate appeal which she could not interpret. But it so stabbed her heart that she would not let him go with his message to her unread and unanswered. "Is there nothing I—we—can do for you?" she asked, stammering a little, for perhaps it would seem to him a strange question.

Thank you many times, no," he began, but stopped on a sudden thought. "Yes, there is one thing you could both do, if you would," he went on. "I've just been to see Miss Verney at the vicarage. If you could interest yourselves in her—if you could try to find her a home—a situation of some sort, it would