hus exactly where I wanted
her to be, for, frankly, I became conscious, at this climax of my
conclusion, that I a little wanted her to be where she had distinctly
ended by betraying to me that her proper inspiration had placed her. If
I have just said that my apprehensions, of various kinds, had finally
and completely subsided, a more exact statement would perhaps have been
that from the moment our eyes met over the show of our couple on the
sofa, the question of any other calculable thing than _that_ hint of a
relation had simply known itself superseded. Reduced to its plainest
terms, this sketch of an improved acquaintance between our comrades was
designed to make Lady John think. It was designed to make me do no
less, but we thought, inevitably, on different lines.

I have already so represented my successions of reflection as rapid that
I may not appear to exceed in mentioning the amusement and philosophy
with which I presently perceived it as unmistakable that she believed in
the depth of her new sounding. It visibly went down for her much nearer
to the bottom of the sea than any plumb I might be qualified to drop.
Poor Briss was in love with his wife--that, when driven to the wall, she
had had to recognise; but she had not had to recognise that his wife was
in love with poor Briss. What was then to militate, on that lady's part,
against a due consciousness, at the end of a splendid summer day, a day
on which occasions had been so multiplied, of an impression of a special
order? What was to prove that there was "nothing in it" when two persons
sat looking so very exceptionally _much_ as if there were everything in
it, as if they were for the first time--thanks to finer
opportunity--doing each other full justice? Mustn't it indeed at this
juncture have come a little over my friend that Grace had lent herself
with uncommon good nature, the previous afternoon, to the arrangement by
which, on the way from town, her ladyship's reputation was to profit by
no worse company, precisely, than poor Briss's? Mrs. Brissenden's own
was obviously now free to profit by my companion's remembering--if the
fact had reached her ears--that Mrs. Brissenden had meanwhile had Long
for an escort. So much, at least, I saw Lady John as seeing, and my
vision may be taken as representing the dash I have confessed myself as
making from my end of our field. It offers us, to be exact, as jostling
each other just sensibly--though _I_ only might fee