would say, "or those unlucky little wretches of
boys will catch it double tides, which really is rather superfluous."

And all the while, amid her very varied interests and occupations,
remembrance of that hidden, twilight life, going forward up-stairs in
the well-known rooms which she now never entered, came to Honoria as
some perpetually recurrent and mournful harmony, in an otherwise not
ungladsome piece of music, might have come. It exercised a certain
dominion over her mind. So that Richard Calmady, though never actually
seen by her, was never wholly absent from her thought. All the orderly
routine of the great house, all the day's work and the sentiment of it,
was subtly influenced by awareness of the actuality of his invisible
presence. And this affected her strongly, causing her hours of
repulsion and annoyance, and again hours of abounding, if reluctant
pity, when the unnatural situation of this man--young as herself,
endowed with a fine intelligence, an aptitude for affairs, the craving
for amusement common to his age and class--and the pathos inherent in
that situation, haunted her imagination. His self-inflicted
imprisonment appeared a reflection upon, in a sense a reproach to, her
own freedom of soul and pleasant liberty of movement. And this troubled
her. It touched her pride somehow. It produced in her a false
conscience, as though she were guilty of an unkindness, a lack of
considerateness and perfect delicacy.

"Whether he behaves well or ill, whether he is good or bad, Richard
Calmady invariably takes up altogether too much room," she would tell
herself half angrily--to find herself within half an hour, under plea
of usefulness to his mother, warmly interested in some practical matter
from which Richard Calmady would derive, at least indirectly, distinct
advantage and benefit!

This, then, was the state of affairs one Saturday afternoon at the
beginning of February. With poor Dickie himself the day had been marked
by abundant discouragement. He was well in body. The restfulness of one
quiet, uneventful week following another had steadied his nerves,
repaired the waste of fever, and restored his physical strength. But,
along with this return of health had come a growing necessity to lay
hold of some idea, to discover some basis of thought, some incentive to
action, which should make life less purposeless and unprofitable.
Richard, in short, was beginning to generate more energy than he could
place. T