t, Ted. I'm so glad to see you.' She was genuinely glad;
it was so good to have belongings once again.

'Did you have a good passage?' asked Edward.

'Pretty good until we got to Ushant and then it did blow. I was glad to
get home.'

'I'm very glad to see you,' said Edward, 'very glad.' His eyes fixed on
the sideboard as if he were mesmerised by the cruets. Victoria looked
at him critically. Three years had not made on him the smallest
impression. He was at twenty-eight what he had been at twenty-five or
for the matter of that at eighteen. He was a tall slim figure with
narrow pointed shoulders and a slightly bowed back. His face was pale
without being unhealthy. There was nothing in his countenance to arouse
any particular interest, for he had those average features that commit
no man either to coarseness or to intellectuality. He showed no trace of
the massiveness of his sister's chin; his mouth too was looser and hung
a little open. Alone his eyes, richly grey, recalled his relationship.
Straggly fair hair fell across the left side of his forehead. He peered
through silver rimmed spectacles as he nervously worried his watch chain
with both hands. Every movement exposed the sharpness of his knees
through his worn trousers.

'Ted,' said Victoria, breaking in upon the silence, 'it was kind of you
to come up at once.'

'Of course I'd come up at once. I couldn't leave you here alone. It must
be a big change after the sunshine.'

'Yes,' said Victoria slowly, 'it is a big change. Not only the sunshine.
Other things, you know.'

Edward's hands played still more nervously with his watch chain. He had
not heard much of the manner of Fulton's death. Victoria's serious face
encouraged him to believe that she might harrow him with details, weep
even. He feared any expression of feeling, not because he was hard but
because it was so difficult to know what to say. He was neither hard nor
soft; he was a schoolmaster and could deal readily enough with the pangs
of Andromeda but what should he say to a live woman, his sister too?

'I understand--I--you see, it's quite awful about Dick--' he stopped,
lost, groping for the proper sentiment.

'Ted,' said Victoria, 'don't condole with me. I don't want to be
unkind--if you knew everything--But there, I'd rather not tell you; poor
Dicky 's dead and I suppose it's wrong, but I can't be sorry.'

Edward looked at her with some disapproval. The marriage had not been a
success, he kn