ents. Something he must say, and the most insignificant phrase was
the best.

'Will you sit--rest after your walk?'

She did so; scarcely could she have stood longer. And with the physical
ease there seemed to come a sudden mental relief. A thought sprang up,
opening upon her like a haven of refuge.

'There is one thing I should like to ask of you,' she began, forcing
herself to regard him directly. 'It is a great thing, I am afraid; it
may be impossible.'

'Will you tell me what it is?' he said, quietly filling the pause that
followed.

'I am thinking of New Wanley.'

She saw a change in his face, slight, but still a change. She spoke more
quickly.

'Will you let the works remain as they are, on the same plan? Will you
allow the workpeople to live under the same rules? I have been among
them constantly, and I am sure that nothing but good results have come
of--of what my husband has done. There is no need to ask you to deal
kindly with them, I know that. But if you could maintain the purpose--?
It will be such a grief to my husband if all his work comes to nothing.
There cannot be anything against your principles in what I ask. It is
so simply for the good of men and women whose lives are so hard. Let New
Wanley remain as an example. Can you do this?'

Hubert, as he listened, joined his hands behind his back, and turned
his eyes to the upper branches of the silver birch, which once in his
thoughts he had likened to Adela. What he heard from her surprised
him, and upon surprise followed mortification. He knew that she had in
appearance adopted Mutimer's principles, but his talk with her in London
at Mrs. Boscobel's had convinced him that her heart was in far other
things than economic problems and schemes of revolution. She had
listened so eagerly to his conversation on art and kindred topics; it
was so evident that she was enjoying a temporary release from a mode
of life which chilled all her warmer instincts. Yet she now made it her
entreaty that he would continue Mutimer's work. Beginning timidly, she
grew to an earnestness which it was impossible to think feigned. He was
unprepared for anything of the kind; his emotions resented it. Though
consciously harbouring no single unworthy desire, he could not endure to
find Adela zealous on her husband's behalf.

Had he misled himself? Was the grief that he had witnessed really that
of a wife for her husband's misfortune? For whatever reason she had
married Muti