nly, out of a simple
remark of Miss Cameron's about missing in the train the hot-water cans
they gave you "to your feet" in Scotland, reticence descended upon Miss
Murchison also. She sat in an odd silence, looking at Miss Cameron,
absorbed apparently in the need of looking at her, finding nothing to
say, her flow of pleasant inquiry dried up, and all her soul at work,
instead, to perceive the woman. Mrs Kilbannon was beginning to think
better of her--it was so much more natural to be a little backward with
strangers--when the moment passed. Their visitor drew herself out of it
with almost a perceptible effort, and seemed to glance consideringly
at them in their aloofness, their incommunicativeness, their plain odds
with her. I don't know what she expected; but we may assume that she was
there simply to offer herself up, and the impulse of sacrifice seldom
considers whether or not it may be understood. It was to her a normal,
natural thing that a friend of Hugh Finlay's should bring an early
welcome to his bride; and to do the normal, natural thing at keen
personal cost was to sound that depth, or rise to that height of the
spirit where pain sustains. We know of Advena that she was prone to
this form of exaltation. Those who feel themselves capable may pronounce
whether she would have been better at home crying in her bedroom.

She decided badly--how could she decide well?--on what she would say to
explain herself.

"I am so sorry," she told them, "that Mr Finlay is obliged to be away."

It was quite wrong; it assumed too much, her knowledge and their
confidence, and the propriety of discussing Mr Finlay's absence. There
was even an unconscious hint of another kind of assumption in it--a
suggestion of apology for Mr Finlay. Advena was aware of it even as it
left her lips, and the perception covered her with a damning blush. She
had a sudden terrified misgiving that her role was too high for her,
that she had already cracked her mask. But she looked quietly at Miss
Cameron and smiled across the tide that surged in her as she added, "He
was very distressed at having to go."

They looked at her in an instant's blank astonishment. Miss Cameron
opened her lips and closed them again, glancing at Mrs Kilbannon. They
fell back together, but not in disorder. This was something much more
formidable than common curiosity. Just what it was they would consider
later; meanwhile Mrs Kilbannon responded with what she would have call