ferred to think that she
thrust him more deeply within her heart. "Quite right," he said, and
exerted himself on her amusement. James, coming home early, found him
on the hearth-rug, talking really well about his flying. Nobody could
have behaved better than James. He took his cup of tea, listened, was
interested, smoked a cigarette; then touched Lucy's shoulder, saying,
"I leave you to your escapades." He went to his own room, with nothing
to do there, and sat it out. He fought his nervousness, refused to see
his spectres, sat deep in his chair, grimly smoking. He heard the
drawing-room door open, Urquhart's voice: "Yes, it will be all right.
Leave all that to me." Lucy said something, he could not tell what.
His heart beat faster to hear her tones. Urquhart let himself out: she
had not gone with him to the front door. Was that a good sign? or a
bad one? He frowned over that intricate question; but kept himself
from her until dinner-time. She might have come in--he half expected
her; but she did not. What was she doing in there by herself? Was she
thinking where she stood? So pretty as she was, so innocent, such a
gentle, sweet-natured creature! Alas, alas!

In short, James was growing sentimental about Lucy. Man of fashion as
he was, with that keen eye for style and the mode, it may well be that
Urquhart's interest in her was a kind of _cachet_. A hall-mark!
However that may be, James looked at her more curiously during that
July than he had done since he saw her first in the garden of Drem
House. Yes, Lucy was pretty; more than that, she had charm. He saw it
now. She moved her head about like a little bird--and yet she was not
a little woman by any means; tall, rather, for a woman. But there was
an absence of suspicion about Lucy--or rather of fundamental suspicion
(for she was full of little superficial alarms), which was infinitely
charming--but how pathetic! It was deeply pathetic; it made him
vaguely unhappy, and for a long time he did not know why tears swam
into his eyes as he watched her over the top of his evening paper, or
was aware (at the tail of his eye) of her quick and graceful motions
before her dressing-glass. Studying his feelings deeply, as never
before, he found himself out. It was that he was to lose her, had
perhaps lost her, just as he had found out how inexpressibly dear she
was to be. And amazement came upon him, and dismay to realise that
this sweetness of hers, this pliancy of temper, this s