ful pathos of her attitude when, by chance, searching his pocket
for his handkerchief, something crackled, and he felt there an unopened
letter, which had arrived at the moment he was leaving his house, and he
had slipped into his coat to read in the cab as he drove along. Pierston
drew it sufficiently forth to observe by the post-mark that it came from
his natal isle. Having hardly a correspondent in that part of the world
now he began to conjecture on the possible sender.

The lady on his right, whom he had brought in, was a leading actress of
the town--indeed, of the United Kingdom and America, for that matter--a
creature in airy clothing, translucent, like a balsam or sea-anemone,
without shadows, and in movement as responsive as some highly
lubricated, many-wired machine, which, if one presses a particular
spring, flies open and reveals its works. The spring in the present
case was the artistic commendation she deserved and craved. At this
particular moment she was engaged with the man on her own right, a
representative of Family, who talked positively and hollowly, as if
shouting down a vista of five hundred years from the Feudal past. The
lady on Jocelyn's left, wife of a Lord Justice of Appeal, was in like
manner talking to her companion on the outer side; so that, for the
time, he was left to himself. He took advantage of the opportunity, drew
out his letter, and read it as it lay upon his napkin, nobody observing
him, so far as he was aware.

It came from the wife of one of his father's former workmen, and was
concerning her son, whom she begged Jocelyn to recommend as candidate
for some post in town that she wished him to fill. But the end of the
letter was what arrested him--

'You will be sorry to hear, Sir, that dear little Avice Caro, as we used
to call her in her maiden days, is dead. She married her cousin, if you
do mind, and went away from here for a good-few years, but was left
a widow, and came back a twelvemonth ago; since when she faltered and
faltered, and now she is gone.'

2. III. SHE BECOMES AN INACCESSIBLE GHOST

By imperceptible and slow degrees the scene at the dinner-table receded
into the background, behind the vivid presentment of Avice Caro, and
the old, old scenes on Isle Vindilia which were inseparable from her
personality. The dining room was real no more, dissolving under the bold
stony promontory and the incoming West Sea. The handsome marchioness in
geranium-red and dia