“May I go with you and carry it for you?” he said, promptly; and of course she could not refuse so civil an offer.  The awkward part of the arrangement was that they had to go along through this straggling strip of wood in single file, making a really confidential chat almost an impossibility; whereupon he proposed, and she agreed, that they should get out into the highway; and thereafter they went on to the station by the ordinary road.

But this task he had undertaken proved to be a great deal more difficult and delicate than he had anticipated.  To have a talk with Francie—­that seemed simple enough; it was less simple, as he discovered, to have to tell Lionel’s cousin that the young man had gone and engaged himself to be married.  Indeed, he beat about the bush for a considerable time.

“You see,” he said, “a young fellow at his time of life, especially if he has been petted a good deal, is very apt to be wayward and restless, and likely to get into trouble through the mere impulsiveness, the recklessness of youth—­”

“Mr. Mangan,” Miss Francie said, with a smile in the quiet gray eyes, “why do you always talk of Linn as if he were so much younger than you?  There is no great difference.  You always speak as if you were quite middle-aged.”

“I am worse than middle-aged—­I am resigned, and read Marcus Aurelius,” he said.  “I suppose I have taken life too easily.  Youth is the time for fighting; there is no fight left in me at all; I accept what happens.  Oh, by the way, when my book on Comte comes out, I may have to buckle on my armor again; I suppose there will be strife and war and deadly thrusts; unless, indeed, the Positivists may not consider me worth answering.  However, that is of no consequence; it’s about Linn I have come down; and really, Miss Francie, I fear he is in a bad way, and that he is taking a worse way to get out of it.”

“I am very sorry to hear that,” she said, gravely.

“And then he’s such a good fellow,” Mangan continued.  “If he were selfish or cruel or grasping, one might think that a few buffets from the world might rather be of service to him; but as it is I don’t understand at all how he has got himself into such a position—­or been entrapped into it; you see, I don’t know Miss Burgoyne very well—­”

“Miss Burgoyne?” she repeated, doubtfully.

“Miss Burgoyne of the New Theatre.”

Then Mangan watched his companion, timidly and furtively—­which was a strange thing for him, for ordinarily his deep-set gray eyes were singularly intense and sincere.

“Perhaps I ought to tell you at once,” he said, slowly, “that—­that—­the fact is, Lionel is engaged to be married to Miss Burgoyne.”

“Lionel—­engaged to be married?” she said, quickly, and she looked up.  He met her eyes and read them; surely there was nothing there other than a certain pleased curiosity; she had forgotten that this engagement might be the cause of her cousin’s trouble; she only seemed to think it odd that Linn was about to be married.