person so much in
evidence, and indeed it was tolerably clear to me that neither party was
duped. Lady John didn't want a lover; this would have been, as people
say, a larger order than, given the other complications of her
existence, she could meet; but she wanted, in a high degree, the
appearance of carrying on a passion that imposed alike fearless
realisations and conscious renouncements, and this circumstance fully
fell in with the convenience and the special situation of her friend.
Her vanity rejoiced, so far as she dared to let it nibble, and the
mysteries she practised, the dissimulations she elaborated, the general
danger of detection in which she flattered herself that she publicly
walked, were after all so much grist to the mill of that appetite.

By just so much, however, as it could never come up between them that
there was another woman in Gilbert's history, by just so much would it
on the other hand have been an articulate axiom that as many of the poor
Brisses of the world as she might care to accommodate would be welcome
to figure in her own. This personage, under that deeper induction, I
suddenly became aware that I also greatly pitied--pitied almost as much
as I pitied Mrs. Server; and my pity had doubtless something to do with
the fact that, after I had proposed to him that we should adjourn
together and we had, on his prompt, even though slightly dry response,
placed the invidious arbour at a certain distance, I passed my hand into
his arm. There were things I wanted of him, and the first was that he
should let me show him I could be kind to him. I had made of the
circumstance of tea at the house a pretext for our leaving the others,
each of whom I felt as rather showily calling my attention to their good
old ground for not wishing to rejoin the crowd. As to what Brissenden
wished I had made up my mind; I had made up my mind as to the subject of
his thoughts while they wandered, during his detention, from Lady John;
and if the next of my wishes was to enter into his desire, I had decided
on giving it effect by the time we reached the shortest of the vistas at
the end of which the house reared a brave front.

VII

I stayed him there while I put it to him that he would probably in fact
prefer to go back.

"You're not going then yourself?"

"No, I don't particularly want tea; and I may as well now confess to you
that I'm taking a lonely, unsociable walk. I don't enjoy such occasions
as t