uite unexpectedly," she said. "I had to go like that."

"I--I hope you weren't ill?"

He recalled Braybrooke's remarks about doctors. Perhaps she had really
been ill. Perhaps something had happened abroad, and he had done her a
wrong.

"No, I haven't been ill. It wasn't that," she said.

The thought of Camber persisted, and now persecuted her.

"I am quite sure you didn't miss me," she said, with a colder voice.

"But I did!" he said.

"For how long?"

The mocking look he knew so well had come into her eyes. How much did
she know?

"Have you seen Miss Van Tuyn since you came back?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. She paid me a visit soon after I arrived."

Craven looked down. He realized that something had been said, that Miss
Van Tuyn had perhaps talked injudiciously. But even if she had, why
should Lady Sellingworth mind? His relation with her was so utterly
different from his relation with the lovely American. It never occurred
to him that this wonderful elderly woman, for whom he had such a
peculiar feeling, could care for him at all as a girl might, could think
of him as a woman thinks of a man with whom she might have an affair of
the heart. She fascinated him. Yes! But she did not fascinate that part
of him which instinctively responded to Beryl Van Tuyn. And that he
fascinated her in any physical way simply did not enter his mind.
Nevertheless, at that moment he felt uncomfortable and, absurdly enough,
almost guilty.

"Have you seen Beryl since her father's death?" said Lady Sellingworth.

"No," he said. "At least--yes, I suppose I have."

"You suppose?"

Her eyes had not lost their mocking expression.

"I happened to see her in Glebe Place with that fellow they are all
chattering about, but I didn't speak to her. I believe her father was
dead then. But I didn't know it at the time."

"Oh! Is he so very handsome, as they say?"

She could not help saying this, and watching him as she said it.

"I should say he was a good-looking chap," answered Craven frigidly.
"But he looks like a wrong 'un."

"It is difficult to tell what people are at a glance."

"Some people--yes. But I think with others one look is enough."

"Yes, that's true," she said, thinking of him. "Shall we go a little
farther towards the woods?"

"Yes; let us."

She knew he was suffering obscurely that day, perhaps in his pride,
perhaps in something else. She hoped it was in his pride. Anyhow, she
felt pity for him in her new-foun