ted with reverence, consideration,
liberality ... and even justice; but--he could do without them. Harry
couldn't. And so they would always continue to fall in love with Harry,
and to find Van Buren a little dull.

* * * * *

When Romer arrived at the Green Gate that afternoon he found Valentia
sitting alone in the drawing-room. Her hands were clasped, she had a
serious, anxious, thoughtful expression that he had never seen before.
He was surprised at the painful start it gave him to see her again, but
he came in defying this sensation.

"Hallo!" he said, in what he meant to be a perfectly easy manner.

He glanced round the room.

"Where's Harry?"

"Harry's gone," said Valentia, in a low voice.

"Oh, has he?"

Romer walked to the window. He looked at her dress, a white dress that
he liked, but did not meet her eyes. Then he said--

"Oh, he's gone. When is he coming back?"

"Never," she said.

Romer didn't answer, nor ask why.

After a minute he said--

"Where's Daphne?"

"Gone to stay with Mrs. Foster for a week."

"Oh! Who's coming down to-day?"

"Nobody. I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind--being alone, I mean." She
spoke without her usual fluency.

He stood staring out of the window into the quiet, damp garden. Then he
turned slowly round and looked at her. He looked at her little feet in
their little white laced shoes; at the slim, narrow line of the white
dress; at the hands clasped in her lap....

And he felt a sudden pang of cruel, realistic jealousy. But he looked at
her eyes and saw tears in them, and, pitying her, he crushed it down for
ever.

The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too
often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real
use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis
they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too
much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine
intuition of men and the want of it in women. Fortunately, Valentia's
feeling of remorseful tenderness towards Romer enabled her to read him
now. Of course she would have loved to cry, to explain at great length,
to beg him to forgive her and have a reconciliation. But something told
her that he could not have borne it; that the subject must never be
touched; that she must spare him any reference to it--any scene.

So she said nothing.

* * * * *