sty. We've been
doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted to get on
home.'

'He--he's not coming?'

'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'

'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting off
quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech.
She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out.

'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'

'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'

'Yes. When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest bit
of modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them we stopped,
talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on.
The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just now, and doesn't want to
see anybody. He's a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a little
uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things. His poetry
is rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he
has just come in for a terrible slating from the --- Review that was
published yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident.
Perhaps you've read it?'

'No.'

'So much the better. O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of those
articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers
upon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset by it. He says it is
the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair
attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop from
spreading. That's just Trewe's weak point. He lives so much by himself
that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the
bustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn't come here,
making the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll
pardon--'

'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here! Has he never said
anything about getting letters from this address?'

'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, he
thought, visiting here at the time?'

'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'

'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'

'Or in his poems?'

'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'

Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in their
writer. As soon as she could get away she went into the nursery and
tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, till
she had a sudden sense of dis