the first place, the self-consciousness due to her mourning
attire, which drew attention to herself; it might have been a
compromising uniform; and the mere fact of her mother's death--quite
apart from the question of her conduct in relation thereto--gave her, in
an interview with a person whom she had not seen since before the death,
a feeling akin to guiltiness--guiltiness of some misdemeanour of taste,
some infraction of the social law against notoriety. She felt, in her
mourning, like one who is being led publicly by policemen to the
police-station. In her fancy she could hear people saying: "Look at that
girl in deep mourning," and she could see herself blushing, as it were
apologetic.

But much worse than this general mortification in presence of an
acquaintance seen after a long interval was the special constraint due
to the identity of the acquaintance. It was with George Cannon that she
had first deceived and plotted against her ingenuous mother's hasty
plans. It was her loyalty to George Cannon that had been the cause of
her inexplicable disloyalty to her mother. She could not recall her
peculiar and delicious agitations during the final moments of her
previous interview with Cannon--that night of February in the newspaper
office, while her mother was dying in London--without a profound
unreasoning shame which intensified most painfully her natural grief as
an orphan.

There was this to be said: she was now disturbed out of her torpid
indifference to her environment. As she fidgeted there, pale and
frowning, in the noisy basket-chair, beneath George Cannon's eyes, she
actually perceived again that romantic quality of existence which had
always so powerfully presented itself to her in the past. She reflected:
"How strange that the dreaded scene has now actually begun! He has come
to London, and here we are together, in this house, which at the
beginning of the year was nothing but a name to me! And mother is away
there in the churchyard, and I am in black! And it is all due to him. He
sent Miss Gailey and mother to London. He willed it!... No! It is all
due to me! I went to see him one late afternoon. I sought him out. He
didn't seek me out. And just because I went to see him one afternoon,
mother is dead, and I am here! Strange!" These reflections were dimly
beautiful to her, even in her sadness and in her acute distress. The
coma had assuredly passed, if only for a space.

II

"Well, now," he said, af