"I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron," Grace said, "but she is so fond of you, and she has great respect for your judgment. If you could only talk to her about the anxiety she is causing. These Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle--the wife is Mr. Cardew's sister--are putting all sorts of ideas into her head. And she has met a man there, a Mr. Akers, and--I'm afraid she thinks she is in love with him, Mr. Cameron."

He met her eyes gravely.

"Have you tried not forbidding her to go to the Doyles?"

"I have forbidden her nothing. It is her grandfather."

"Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't it?" he said. "I wouldn't worry too much, Mrs. Cardew. And don't hold too tight a rein."

He was very down-hearted when he left. Grace's last words placed a heavy burden on him.

"I simply feel," she said, "that you can do more with her than we can, and that if something isn't done she will ruin her life. She is too fine and wonderful to have her do that."

To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period would be most unfair. She was suffering cruelly; the impulse that led her to meet Louis Akers against her family's wishes was irresistible, but there was a new angle to her visits to the Doyle house. She was going there now, not so much because she wished to go, as because she began to feel that her Aunt Elinor needed her.