lad to hurry back, when she had been so restlessly
anxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like a
means of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later on
Michael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth was
assuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of his
predecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously,
half with _malice prepense_. She told herself continually that she did
not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of
marriage.

But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection
of these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen her
now constant meetings with him?

Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate
knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work
out quite smoothly.

Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's
demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his
intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had set
her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this
exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to
respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances.
He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on
the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how
he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine
charm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himself
a celibate--had been taken captive after all. To judge by the letters
which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one
to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect
that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to
have remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long.

We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition of
these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy.

* * * * *

In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the
postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in
London hospitals.

Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over
again. They were a kind of anodyne.

On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way across
the down with her basket to a distant