n herself at dinner, so that he had had no
glimpse of her in her new character, and no means of divining the real
nature of the tie between herself and Owen Leath. One thing, however,
was clear: whatever her real feelings were, and however much or little
she had at stake, if she had made up her mind to marry Owen she had more
than enough skill and tenacity to defeat any arts that poor Madame de
Chantelle could oppose to her.

Darrow himself was in fact the only person who might possibly turn her
from her purpose: Madame de Chantelle, at haphazard, had hit on the
surest means of saving Owen--if to prevent his marriage were to save
him! Darrow, on this point, did not pretend to any fixed opinion; one
feeling alone was clear and insistent in him: he did not mean, if he
could help it, to let the marriage take place.

How he was to prevent it he did not know: to his tormented imagination
every issue seemed closed. For a fantastic instant he was moved to
follow Madame de Chantelle's suggestion and urge Anna to withdraw her
approval. If his reticence, his efforts to avoid the subject, had not
escaped her, she had doubtless set them down to the fact of his knowing
more, and thinking less, of Sophy Viner than he had been willing to
admit; and he might take advantage of this to turn her mind gradually
from the project. Yet how do so without betraying his insincerity? If
he had had nothing to hide he could easily have said: "It's one thing to
know nothing against the girl, it's another to pretend that I think her
a good match for Owen." But could he say even so much without betraying
more? It was not Anna's questions, or his answers to them, that he
feared, but what might cry aloud in the intervals between them. He
understood now that ever since Sophy Viner's arrival at Givre he had
felt in Anna the lurking sense of something unexpressed, and perhaps
inexpressible, between the girl and himself...When at last he fell
asleep he had fatalistically committed his next step to the chances of
the morrow.

The first that offered itself was an encounter with Mrs. Leath as he
descended the stairs the next morning. She had come down already hatted
and shod for a dash to the park lodge, where one of the gatekeeper's
children had had an accident. In her compact dark dress she looked more
than usually straight and slim, and her face wore the pale glow it took
on at any call on her energy: a kind of warrior brightness that made her
small head