Blandford could scarcely believe his senses.

There were tears in her eyes--this woman who never cried; her voice trembled--she who had always controlled her emotions.
He took advantage of this odd but opportune melting.

He placed his arm around her shoulders.

She tried to escape it, but with a coy, shy movement, half hysterical, half girlish, unlike her usual stony, moral precision.

"Yes, Joan," he repeated, laughingly, "but whose fault is it?
Not HIS, remember! And I firmly believe he thinks you can do him good." "But he has never seen me," she continued, with a nervous little laugh, "and probably considers me some old Gorgon--like--like--Sister Jemima Skerret." Blandford smiled with the complacency of far-reaching masculine intuition.