sure that it was significant herself.

The curious atmosphere that now developed between them revealed itself
more particularly in the letters which they were both of them writing
to Mrs. Payne at Overton. Arthur's had never been very fluent, but
Gabrielle had found an outlet for herself in this correspondence. In
his early letters from Lapton Arthur had rarely mentioned Gabrielle;
whenever he had done so it had been half contemptuously, as though the
feeling of repression which emanates from the best of schoolmasters had
attached itself to the schoolmaster's wife. At the same time Gabrielle
had been brief, but extremely natural. With the card-playing incident
a new situation had developed. Arthur, as we have seen, had been
inclined to turn up his nose at Gabrielle's society when it was thrust
upon him by Considine, while Gabrielle had given signs of a more
maternal care. In the later stages of this period Gabrielle, being
taken as a matter of course, had practically dropped out of Arthur's
letters. The episode of the rabbit changed all this, for while Arthur
now began to expand in a naive enthusiasm, Gabrielle's attempts at
writing about him fell altogether flat. Judging by her letters Mrs.
Payne might reasonably have supposed that she had grown thoroughly sick
of the boy.

The real cause of her reticence was not so easily fathomable. I
suppose it was her instinctive method of withdrawing a subject that was
secretly precious to her from the knowledge of the one person in the
world who might reasonably assert a right to share it. If she had
analysed it, no doubt she would have proved that her interest in Arthur
was more intimate than she had ever confessed. But she didn't analyse
it. Neither, for that matter, did Mrs. Payne. Looking backward, a
year later, that good woman realised what a psychological howler she
had made. At the time she was merely thankful that Arthur was happy in
the society of a woman whom she liked and trusted--to whom, indeed, she
had more or less confided him--and sorry that at the very moment when
her influence might have counted, Gabrielle appeared to be losing
interest in the boy. It cheered her to think that Arthur was
expressing any admiration so human and, to be frank, so unlike himself.
She was even more cheered when she received Considine's report on him
at the beginning of the Christmas holidays. "_There have been one or
two unpleasant incidents,_" wrote the tactful Consi