ct
rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere
of exquisite manners.

Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came
back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He
had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something
striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much.

A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a
choice of subject.

From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of
mouse talk, intermittent, _affaire_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and
dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and
bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of
life in a new soft silken coat!

Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time
to time.

"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in
these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says."

"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"

"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not
our morbid craving for a listener."

"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about
themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of
his on the subject would be considered final.

"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more
like a cavalier than ever.

Then he actually noticed how pale she was.

"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you
awake."

"Yes," she said, and hung her head.

Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her
more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with
recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than
those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling
new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing
him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality
been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The
elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this
and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day,
toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some
unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night.

He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she h