"Do!" Philippa begged him. "I have had such a miserable time in
town. You can't think how restful it is to be back here."
"I am afraid," he observed, "that your journey has not been
successful."
Philippa shook her head.
"It has been completely unsuccessful," she sighed. "I have not
been able to hear a word about my brother. I am so sorry for poor
Helen, too. They were only engaged, you know, a few days before he
left for the front this last time."
Captain Griffiths nodded sympathetically.
"I never met Major Felstead," he remarked, "but every one who has
seems to like him very much. He was doing so well, too, up to that
last unfortunate affair, wasn't he?"
"Dick is a dear," Philippa declared. "I never knew any one with so
many friends. He would have been commanding his battalion now, if
only he were free. His colonel wrote and told me so himself."
"I wish there were something I could do," Griffiths murmured, a
little awkwardly. "It hurts me, Lady Cranston, to see you so upset."
She looked at him for a moment in faint surprise.
"Nobody can do anything," she bemoaned. "That is the unfortunate
part of it all."
He rose to his feet and was immediately conscious, as he always was
when he stood up, that there was a foot or two of his figure which
he had no idea what to do with.
"You wouldn't feel like a ride to-morrow morning, Lady Cranston?" he
asked, with a wistfulness which seemed somehow stifled in his rather
unpleasant voice.
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