d "The
Swallow," and revealed Mr. Fullarton standing on the threshold. The
latter was not well pleased with the scene before him. There was an air
of comfort about it which, under the circumstances, he thought decidedly
wrong; besides which he could not get rid of a vague misgiving (the
rarest thing with him!) that his visit was scarcely welcome or well
timed.

Miss Tresilyan rose instantly to greet the intruder (yes, that's the
right word) with her usual calm courtesy. Very few words had been
exchanged for the last hour, but she was perfectly aware--what woman is
not?--of the influence she had exercised over her listener. That
consciousness had made her strangely happy. So, _she_ certainly could
have survived the chaplain's absence. Royston Keene rose too, quite
slowly. There are compounds, you know, that always remain soft and
ductile in a certain temperature, but harden into stone at the first
contact with the outer air. It was just so with him. Even as he moved,
all gentle feelings were struck dead in his heart, and he stood up a
harder man than ever, with no kinder emotion left than bitter anger at
the interruption. He could not always command his eyes, he knew; and, if
he had not passed his hand quickly over his face just then, their
expression might have thrilled through the new-comer disagreeably.

"Cecil, dearest," Mrs. Danvers said, with rather an awkward assumption
of being perfectly at her ease, "Mr. Fullarton was good enough to say he
would come and read to us this evening, and explain some passages. I
don't know why I forgot to tell you. I meant to do so, but--" Her look
finished the sentence. Royston, like the others, guessed what she meant,
and _you_ may guess how he thanked her.

Cecil colored with vexation. She was so anxious to prevent Mrs. Danvers
from feeling dependent that she allowed her to take all sorts of
liberties, and the amiable woman was not disposed to let the privilege
fall into disuse. On the present occasion there was such an absurd
incongruity of time and place that she might possibly have tried to
evade the "exposition," but she happened just then to meet Keene's eye.
The sarcasm there was not so carefully veiled as it usually was in her
presence. Never yet was born Tresilyan who blenched from a challenge; so
she answered at once to express "her sense of Mr. Fullarton's kindness,
and her regret that he had not come earlier in the evening." If Royston
had known how bitterly she desp