a visit; but she had begun a poem
called 'Dionysus at the Well,' and Felix himself had plunged into a
satiric allegory entitled 'The Last of the Laborers.' Nedda, therefore,
walked alone; but at her side went always an invisible companion. In
that long, imaginary walking-out she gave her thoughts and the whole of
her heart, and to be doing this never surprised her, who, before, had
not given them whole to anything. A bee knows the first summer day and
clings intoxicated to its flowers; so did Nedda know and cling. She
wrote him two letters and he wrote her one. It was not poetry; indeed,
it was almost all concerned with Wilmet Gaunt, asking Nedda to find a
place in London where the girl could go; but it ended with the words:

"Your lover,

"DEREK."

This letter troubled Nedda. She would have taken it at once to Felix or
to Flora if it had not been for the first words, "Dearest Nedda," and
those last three. Except her mother, she instinctively distrusted women
in such a matter as that of Wilmet Gaunt, feeling they would want to
know more than she could tell them, and not be too tolerant of what they
heard. Casting about, at a loss, she thought suddenly of Mr. Cuthcott.

At dinner that day she fished round carefully. Felix spoke of him almost
warmly. What Cuthcott could have been doing at Becket, of all places,
he could not imagine--the last sort of man one expected to see there;
a good fellow, rather desperate, perhaps, as men of his age were apt to
get if they had too many women, or no woman, about them.

Which, said Nedda, had Mr. Cuthcott?

Oh! None. How had he struck Nedda? And Felix looked at his little
daughter with a certain humble curiosity. He always felt that the young
instinctively knew so much more than he did.

"I liked him awfully. He was like a dog."

"Ah!" said Felix, "he IS like a dog--very honest; he grins and runs
about the city, and might be inclined to bay the moon."

'I don't mind that,' Nedda thought, 'so long as he's not "superior."'

"He's very human," Felix added.

And having found out that he lived in Gray's Inn, Nedda thought: 'I
will; I'll ask him.'

To put her project into execution, she wrote this note:

"DEAR MR. CUTHCOTT:

"You were so kind as to tell me you wouldn't mind if I bothered you
about things. I've got a very bothery thing to know what to do about,
and I would be so glad of your advice. It so happens that I can't ask my
father and mother. I hope you won't