the corner of the building. From the
conservatory came voices in conversation--Mrs. Swancourt's and the
stranger's.

She had expected him to talk brilliantly. To her surprise he was asking
questions in quite a learner's manner, on subjects connected with the
flowers and shrubs that she had known for years. When after the lapse of
a few minutes he spoke at some length, she considered there was a hard
square decisiveness in the shape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own
and Stephen's, they were not there and then newly constructed, but were
drawn forth from a large store ready-made. They were now approaching the
window to come in again.

'That is a flesh-coloured variety,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'But oleanders,
though they are such bulky shrubs, are so very easily wounded as to be
unprunable--giants with the sensitiveness of young ladies. Oh, here is
Elfride!'

Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at the dropping
of the screen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him half comically, and Knight
in a minute or two placed himself beside the young lady.

A complexity of instincts checked Elfride's conventional smiles of
complaisance and hospitality; and, to make her still less comfortable,
Mrs. Swancourt immediately afterwards left them together to seek her
husband. Mr. Knight, however, did not seem at all incommoded by his
feelings, and he said with light easefulness:

'So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by a few
minutes only when we were in London.'

'Yes. I found that you had seen Mrs. Swancourt.'

'And now reviewer and reviewed are face to face,' he added
unconcernedly.

'Yes: though the fact of your being a relation of Mrs. Swancourt's takes
off the edge of it. It was strange that you should be one of her family
all the time.' Elfride began to recover herself now, and to look into
Knight's face. 'I was merely anxious to let you know my REAL meaning in
writing the book--extremely anxious.'

'I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that my remarks
should have reached home. They very seldom do, I am afraid.'

Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions as
firmly as if friendship and politeness did not in the least require an
immediate renunciation of them.

'You made me very uneasy and sorry by writing such things!' she
murmured, suddenly dropping the mere cacueterie of a fashionable first
introduction, and speaking with some of the dudgeon of a