rs; coarse common Newton Winch, whom
he had called on because he could, as a gentleman, after all afford to,
coarse common Newton Winch, who had had troubles and been epidemically
poisoned, lamentably sick, who bore in his face and in the very tension,
quite exactly the "charm," of his manner, the traces of his late ordeal,
and, for that matter, of scarce completed gallant emergence--this
astonishing ex-comrade was simply writing himself at a stroke (into our
friend's excited imagination at all events) the most distinguished of
men. Oh, _he_ was going to be interesting, if Florence Ash had been
going to be; but Mark felt how, under the law of a lively present
difference, that would be as an effect of one's having one's self
thoroughly rallied. He knew within the minute that the tears stood in
his eyes; he stared through them at his friend with a sharp "Why, how do
you know? How _can_ you?" To which he added before Winch could speak: "I
met your charming sister-in-law a couple of hours since--at luncheon, at
the Pocahontas; and heard from her that you were badly laid up and had
spoken of me. So I came to minister to you."

The object of this design hovered there again, considerably restless,
shifting from foot to foot, changing his place, beginning and giving up
motions, striking matches for a fresh cigarette, offering them again,
redundantly, to his guest and then not lighting himself--but all the
while with the smile of another creature than the creature known to
Mark; all the while with the history of something that had happened to
him ever so handsomely shining out. Mark was conscious within himself
from this time on of two quite distinct processes of notation--that
of his practically instant surrender to the consequences of the act of
perception in his host of which the two women trained suppos-ably in the
art of pleasing had been altogether incapable; and that of some other
condition on Newton's part that left his own poor power of divination
nothing less than shamed. This last was signally the case on the
former's saying, ever so responsively, almost radiantly, in answer to
his account of how he happened to come: "Oh then it's very interesting!"
_That_ was the astonishing note, after what he had been through: neither
Mrs. Folliott nor Florence Ash had so much as hinted or breathed to him
that _he_ might have incurred that praise. No wonder therefore he was
now taken--with this fresh party's instant suspicion and im