As she reached it, he stepped forward, and lifted it from the chair to assist her.

The act was so unprecedented, as Mr.Rushbrook never indulged in those minor masculine courtesies, that she was momentarily as confused as a younger girl at the gallantry of a younger man.

In their previous friendship he had seldom drawn near her except to shake her hand--a circumstance that had always recurred to her when his free and familiar life had been the subject of gossip.

But she now had a more frightened consciousness that her nerves were strangely responding to his powerful propinquity, and she involuntarily contracted her pretty shoulders as he gently laid the cloak upon them.

Yet even when the act was completed, she had a superstitious instinct that the significance of this rare courtesy was that it was final, and that he had helped her to interpose something that shut him out from her forever.
She was turning away with a heightened color, when the sound of light, hurried footsteps, and the rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the hall.