desiring either way; she was
simply looking at the two pictures which the two events painted for her
fancy; and she did not know which picture she preferred. So all was still
bewilderment, all still rocking from the sudden gust that had proceeded
out of dear Lady Mildmay's gentle lips. But the undercurrent of wonder
and of reproach that there had been in the warning May Quisante now
almost missed. By an effort at last she realised its presence, the
naturalness of it, and its rightness. But still it seemed to her a little
conventional, something that might be supposed to be appropriate, but was
not, if the truth were faced. "Alexander and I have never been like that
to one another--at least never for more than a very little while," was
the form her thought about it took.

When he came in that evening, she found herself looking at him with
wonder, and with a sort of scepticism about what her visitor had said. He
seemed so full of life; it was impossible to think of him as being
likely, or even able, to die. But she had made up her mind to open the
subject to him, to force something from him, and to learn about this
visit to the doctor which he had so studiously concealed from her. She
gave him tea, and was so far affected by her mood as to show unusual
kindness towards him, or rather to let her uniform friendliness be tinged
by an affection which was not part of her habitual bearing; with the help
of this she hoped to lead up to a subject which her own strangely mixed
meditations somehow made it hard for her to approach. But Quisante also
had a scheme; he also was watching and working for an opportunity, and
seeing one now in her great cordiality of manner he seized it with his
rapid decisiveness, cutting in before his wife had time to develop her
attack. He pressed her hand as she gave him his cup, sighed as though in
weariness, took a paper from his pocket, and laid it on the table, giving
it a tentative gentle push in the direction of her chair.

"We've got the Alethea afloat at last," he said. "There's the prospectus,
if you care to look at it." With this he glanced at the clock, sighed
again and added, "I must be at the House early this evening. By Jove, I'm
tired though!" This little odd ineradicable trick of his made May smile;
he was never so tired as when he had a risky card to play; then, indeed,
he affected for his purposes some sort of reconcilability with those
incongruous ideas of collapse and mortality tha