"Do you mean you're disappointed because you judge Miss Anvoy to
be?"

"Yes; I hoped for a greater effect last evening. We had two or
three people, but he scarcely opened his mouth."

"He'll be all the better to-night," I opined after a moment. Then
I pursued: "What particular importance do you attach to the idea

of her being impressed?"
Adelaide turned her mild pale eyes on me as for rebuke of my

levity. "Why the importance of her being as happy as WE are!"
I'm afraid that at this my levity grew. "Oh that's a happiness

almost too great to wish a person!" I saw she hadn't yet in her
mind what I had in mine, and at any rate the visitor's actual bliss

was limited to a walk in the garden with Kent Mulville. Later in
the afternoon I also took one, and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till

dinner, at which we failed of the company of Saltram, who had
caused it to be reported that he was indisposed and lying down.

This made us, most of us--for there were other friends present--
convey to each other in silence some of the unutterable things that

in those years our eyes had inevitably acquired the art of
expressing. If a fine little American enquirer hadn't been there

we would have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide would have
pretended not to hear. I had seen her, before the very fact,

abstract herself nobly; and I knew that more than once, to keep it
from the servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly, she had helped

her husband to carry him bodily to his room. Just recently he had
been so wise and so deep and so high that I had begun to get

nervous--to wonder if by chance there were something behind it, if
he were kept straight for instance by the knowledge that the hated

Pudneys would have more to tell us if they chose. He was lying
low, but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us in this

connexion that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest
pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes

had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to
feel about our ears. Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but

had come back with a face that told as few tales as I had seen it
succeed in telling on the evening I waited in the lecture-room with

Miss Anvoy. I said to myself that our friend had gone out, but it
was a comfort that the presence of a comparative stranger deprived

us of the dreary duty of suggesting to each other, in respect of
his errand, edifying possibilities in which we didn't ourselves

believe. At ten o'clock he came into the drawing-room with his
waistcoat much awry but his eyes sending out great signals. It was

precisely with his entrance that I ceased to be vividly conscious
of him. I saw that the crystal, as I had called it, had begun to

swing, and I had need of my immediate attention for Miss Anvoy.
Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have said

to-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention had
been rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a

perfect general consciousness that something great was going on:
it was a little like having been etherised to hear Herr Joachim

play. The old music was in the air; I felt the strong pulse of
thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, the plunge; but

I knew something about one of the listeners that nobody else knew,
and Saltram's monologue could reach me only through that medium.

To this hour I'm of no use when, as a witness, I'm appealed to--for
they still absurdly contend about it--as to whether or no on that

historic night he was drunk; and my position is slightly
ridiculous, for I've never cared to tell them what it really was I

was taken up with. What I got out of it is the only morsel of the
total experience that is quite my own. The others were shared, but

this is incommunicable. I feel that now, I'm bound to say, even in
thus roughly evoking the occasion, and it takes something from my

pride of clearness. However, I shall perhaps be as clear as is
absolutely needful if I remark that our young lady was too much

given up to her own intensity of observation to be sensible of
mine. It was plainly not the question of her marriage that had

brought her back. I greatly enjoyed this discovery and was sure
that had that question alone been involved she would have stirred

no step. In this case doubtless Gravener would, in spite of the
House of Commons, have found means to rejoin her. It afterwards

made me uncomfortable for her that, alone in the lodging Mrs.
Mulville had put before me as dreary, she should have in any degree

the air of waiting for her fate; so that I was presently relieved
at hearing of her having gone to stay at Coldfield. If she was in

England at all while the engagement stood the only proper place for
her was under Lady Maddock's wing. Now that she was unfortunate

and relatively poor, perhaps her prospective sister-in-law would be
wholly won over.

There would be much to say, if I had space, about the way her
behaviour, as I caught gleams of it, ministered to the image that

had taken birth in my mind, to my private amusement, while that
other night I listened to George Gravener in the railway-carriage.

I watched her in the light of this queer possibility--a formidable
thing certainly to meet--and I was aware that it coloured,

extravagantly perhaps, my interpretation of her very looks and
tones. At Wimbledon for instance it had appeared to me she was

literally afraid of Saltram, in dread of a coercion that she had
begun already to feel. I had come up to town with her the next day

and had been convinced that, though deeply interested, she was
immensely on her guard. She would show as little as possible

before she should be ready to show everything. What this final
exhibition might be on the part of a girl perceptibly so able to

think things out I found it great sport to forecast. It would have
been exciting to be approached by her, appealed to by her for

advice; but I prayed to heaven I mightn't find myself in such a
predicament. If there was really a present rigour in the situation

of which Gravener had sketched for me the elements, she would have
to get out of her difficulty by herself. It wasn't I who had

launched her and it wasn't I who could help her. I didn't fail to
ask myself why, since I couldn't help her, I should think so much

about her. It was in part my suspense that was responsible for
this; I waited impatiently to see whether she wouldn't have told

Mrs. Mulville a portion at least of what I had learned from
Gravener. But I saw Mrs. Mulville was still reduced to wonder what

she had come out again for if she hadn't come as a conciliatory
bride. That she had come in some other character was the only

thing that fitted all the appearances. Having for family reasons
to spend some time that spring in the west of England, I was in a

manner out of earshot of the great oceanic rumble--I mean of the
continuous hum of Saltram's thought--and my uneasiness tended to

keep me quiet. There was something I wanted so little to have to
say that my prudence surmounted my curiosity. I only wondered if

Ruth Anvoy talked over the idea of The Coxon Fund with Lady
Maddock, and also somewhat why I didn't hear from Wimbledon. I had

a reproachful note about something or other from Mrs. Saltram, but
it contained no mention of Lady Coxon's niece, on whom her eyes had

been much less fixed since the recent untoward events.
CHAPTER X

Poor Adelaide's silence was fully explained later--practically
explained when in June, returning to London, I was honoured by this

admirable woman with an early visit. As soon as she arrived I
guessed everything, and as soon as she told me that darling Ruth

had been in her house nearly a month I had my question ready.
"What in the name of maidenly modesty is she staying in England

for?"
"Because she loves me so!" cried Adelaide gaily. But she hadn't

come to see me only to tell me Miss Anvoy loved her: that was
quite sufficiently established, and what was much more to the point

was that Mr. Gravener had now raised an objection to it. He had