e, as it were, washed out, Mr. Furnival, we may
say, would not have been there to meet her;--of which fact Lady Mason
was perhaps aware.

"I am so grateful to you for this trouble," she said, as she raised
her veil, and while he pressed her hand between both his own. "I can
only ask you to believe that I would not have troubled you unless I
had been greatly troubled myself."

Mr. Furnival, as he placed her in an arm-chair by the fireside,
declared his sorrow that she should be in grief, and then he took
the other arm-chair himself, opposite to her, or rather close to
her,--much closer to her than he ever now seated himself to Mrs. F.
"Don't speak of my trouble," said he, "it is nothing if I can do
anything to relieve you." But though he was so tender, he did not
omit to tell her of her folly in having informed her son that she was
to be in London. "And have you seen him?" asked Lady Mason.

"He was in Harley Street with the ladies last night. But it does not
matter. It is only for your sake that I speak, as I know that you
wish to keep this matter private. And now let us hear what it is. I
cannot think that there can be anything which need really cause you
trouble." And he again took her hand,--that he might encourage her.
Lady Mason let him keep her hand for a minute or so, as though she
did not notice it; and yet as she turned her eyes to him it might
appear that his tenderness had encouraged her.

Sitting there thus, with her hand in his,--with her hand in his
during the first portion of the tale,--she told him all that she
wished to tell. Something more she told now to him than she had done
to Sir Peregrine. "I learned from her," she said, speaking about Mrs.
Dockwrath and her husband, "that he had found out something about
dates which the lawyers did not find out before."

"Something about dates," said Mr. Furnival, looking with all his eyes
into the fire. "You do not know what about dates?"

"No; only this; that he said that the lawyers in Bedford Row--"

"Round and Crook."

"Yes; he said that they were idiots not to have found it out before;
and then he went off to Groby Park. He came back last night; but of
course I have not seen her since."

By this time Mr. Furnival had dropped the hand, and was sitting
still, meditating, looking earnestly at the fire while Lady Mason
was looking earnestly at him. She was trying to gather from his face
whether he had seen signs of danger, and he was trying to gather