luntary
movement. Mary, standing beside her, turned towards her and smiled.

"Not often." The tone was cold. "But you could always find him at the
House." And Lady Tranmore moved away.

"Is there a quiet corner anywhere?" said Cliffe to Mary. "I have such
heaps to tell you."

So while some Polish gentleman in the main drawing-room, whose name
ended in <i>ski</i>, challenged his violin to the impossible, Cliffe and Mary
retired from observation into a small room thrown open with the rest of
the suite, which was in truth the morning-room of the ambassadress.

As soon as they found themselves alone, there was a pause in their
conversation; each involuntarily looked at the other. Mary certainly
recognized that these years of absence had wrought a noticeable change
in the man before her. He had aged. Hard living and hard travelling had
left their marks. But, like Lady Tranmore, she also perceived another
difference. The eyes bent upon her were indeed, as before, the eyes of a
man self-centred, self-absorbed. There was no chivalrous softness in
them, no consideration. The man who owned them used them entirely for
his own purposes; they betrayed none of that changing instinctive
relation towards the human being--any human being--within their range,
which makes the charm of so many faces. But they were sadder, more
sombre, more restless; they thrilled her more than they had already
thrilled her once, in the first moment of her youth.

What was he going to say? From the moment of his first letter to her
from Japan, Mary had perfectly understood that he had some fresh purpose
in his mind. She was not anxious, however, to precipitate the moment of
explanation. She was no longer the young girl whose equilibrium is upset
by the mere approach of the man who interests her. Moreover, there was a
past between herself and Cliffe, the memory of which might indeed point
her to caution. Did he now, after all, want to marry her--because she
was rich, and he was comparatively poor, and could only secure an
English career at the cost of a well-stored wife? Well, all that should
be thought over; by herself no less than by him. Meanwhile her vanity
glowed within her, as she thus held him there, alone, to the
discomfiture of other women more beautiful and more highly placed than
herself; as she remembered his letters in her desk at home; and the
secrets she imagined him to have told her. Then again she felt a rush of
sudden disquiet, caused