quivering beneath the lace-work at her neck.

"That is good of you," he added; "I have but a word to say. Listen to
it, will you? I was sure you would. Last night--or was it last
night?--it seems a year ago. H'm, there are people whom we meet--you
must have experienced the same thing--people that disturb us with
suggestions of something that has gone before. When I saw you last
evening--no, not that; but when I heard your voice, there came with it a
reminiscence of earlier and forgotten days. It was not of the present I
thought, but of a past I remembered I had dreamed. It was like a tangled
skein. One after another the threads unloosed, and as they separated
from each parting knot a memory returned. You were not a stranger, you
were a friend I had lost. I could have sat with you, and from yesterday
I could have led you back from one horizon to another until that
posting-house was reached where our destiny changed its horses and our
hands were first unclasped."

This fine speech delivered, he looked down and plucked at his cuff. And
presently, as he was about to speak again, Mrs. Lyeth raised her fan.

"After that I have either to thank you or to go!" Her voice was less
severe than pained, and she seemed to retreat yet further in her chair.
"And I thank you," she added, after a pause, "but it is you that must
go."

To this Tancred answered nothing. He contented himself with looking
insubordinate and cross.

"My poor boy!" she murmured, and sighed--or was it a sigh?--a sound that
seemed to come less from the heart than the spirit. "My poor boy! But
don't you know that you are absurd? I have three brothers--one of them,
by the way, is here now; he went down the coast on Tuesday with some
friends; he will be back, though, to-morrow or the day after. However,
each of my brothers has fallen in love with a woman older than himself,
and each of them has fallen in love again and again. I am, believe me,
grateful for your homage. What you have said is enough to make any woman
pleased. And were I younger--well, then, since you will have it so--were
I free, I would ask to hear it until I knew the words by heart. It
would be pleasant, that. Oh, there might be so very many pleasant
things; yet that is one that may not be. To-morrow, the next day, no
matter, presently you will go; a week later you will find some beauty in
Madras, and, if you think of me then, it will be but with a smile."

She had risen at last, and stood now