anation for the curiosity of
Grenoble. Perhaps--perhaps it was not prejudice, after all--or not
all of it. The wife of the Chiltern heir would naturally inspire
a considerable interest in any event, and Mrs. Hugh Chiltern in
particular. And these people would shortly understand, if they did not
now understand, that Hugh had come back voluntarily and from a sense
of duty to assume the burdens and responsibilities that so many of
his generation and class had shirked. This would tell in their favour,
surely. At this point in her meditations she consulted the mirror, to
behold a modest, slim-waisted young woman becomingly arrayed in white
linen, whose cheeks were aglow with health, whose eyes seemingly
reflected the fire of a distant high vision. Not a Poppaea, certainly,
nor a Delila. No, it was unbelievable that this, the very field itself
of their future labours, should be denied them. Her heart, at the mere
conjecture, turned to stone.

During the cruise of the Adhemar she had often watched, in the gathering
darkness, those revolving lights on headland or shoal that spread now
a bright band across the sea, and again left the waters desolate in the
night. Thus, ceaselessly revolving from white hope to darker doubt,
were her thoughts, until sometimes she feared to be alone with them, and
surprised him by her presence in his busiest moments. For he was going
ahead on the path they had marked out with a faith in which she could
perceive no flaw. If faint and shadowy forms had already come between
them, he gave no evidence of having as yet discerned these. There was
the absence of news from his family, for instance,--the Graingers, the
Stranger, the Shorters, and the Pendletons, whom she had never seen;
he had never spoken to her of this, and he seemed to hold it as of no
account. Her instinct whispered that it had left its mark, a hidden
mark. And while she knew that consideration for her prompted him to
hold his peace, she told herself that she would have been happier had he
spoken of it.

Always she was brought back to Grenoble when she saw him thus, manlike,
with his gaze steadily fixed on the task. If New York itself withheld
recognition, could Grenoble--provincial and conservative Grenoble,
preserving still the ideas of the last century for which his family had
so unflinchingly stood--be expected to accord it? New York! New York was
many, many things, she knew. The great house could have been filled from
weekend to w