in as if to accumulate the necessary force for
honest speaking at the expense of pleasantness. 'It was the telegram
that began it of course,' she answered.

'Telegram?'

She looked up at him in quite a frightened way--little as there was
to be frightened at in a quiet fellow like him in this sad time of his
life--and said, 'Yes: some telegram--I think--when you were in trouble?
Forgive my alluding to it; but you asked me the question.'

Somerset began reflecting on what messages he had sent Paula, troublous
or otherwise. All he had sent had been sent from the castle, and were
as gentle and mellifluous as sentences well could be which had neither
articles nor pronouns. 'I don't understand,' he said. 'Will you explain
a little more--as plainly as you like--without minding my feelings?'

'A telegram from Nice, I think?'

'I never sent one.'

'O! The one I meant was about money.'

Somerset shook his head. 'No,' he murmured, with the composure of a man
who, knowing he had done nothing of the sort himself, was blinded by his
own honesty to the possibility that another might have done it for him.
'That must be some other affair with which I had nothing to do. O no,
it was nothing like that; the reason for her change of manner was quite
different!'

So timid was Charlotte in Somerset's presence, that her timidity at this
juncture amounted to blameworthiness. The distressing scene which
must have followed a clearing up there and then of any possible
misunderstanding, terrified her imagination; and quite confounded by
contradictions that she could not reconcile, she held her tongue, and
nervously looked out of the window.

'I have heard that Miss Power is soon to be married,' continued
Somerset.

'Yes,' Charlotte murmured. 'It is sooner than it ought to be by rights,
considering how recently my dear father died; but there are reasons in
connection with my brother's position against putting it off: and it is
to be absolutely simple and private.'

There was another interval. 'May I ask when it is to be?' he said.

'Almost at once--this week.'

Somerset started back as if some stone had hit his face.

Still there was nothing wonderful in such promptitude: engagements
broken in upon by the death of a near relative of one of the parties had
been often carried out in a subdued form with no longer delay.

Charlotte's station was now at hand. She bade him farewell; and he
rattled on to the building he had come to inspe