T DANIEL. WHAT AN IMAGE OF
THE COUNTESS SAID TO ADRIAN

Sir Hamilton Torrens is at home, because when a messenger rode from the
Towers in the morning with a note from the Countess to say that her
ladyship was driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage
a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife
instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that
there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never
is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really
must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady
Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's
plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her
arrival, she could choose for herself whether to come in or go on to
Poynders. She chose to come in and interview Sir Hamilton. So consider
that the lady of the house is indisposed, and is keeping her room, and
that the blind man and his sister, and Achilles, have gone to visit a
neighbour.

The Countess was acting on her resolution made in the train to be a free
lance. She had been scheming an interview with Adrian's father before
the next meeting of the lovers, if possible; and now she had caught at
the opportunity afforded by her daughter's absence at Chorlton. Hers was
a resolution that deserved the name, in view of its special object--the
organizing and conduct of what might be a most embarrassing negotiation,
or effort of diplomacy.

These two, three decades back, had behaved when they met like lovers on
the stage who are carried away by their parts and forget the audience.
Unless indeed _they_ had an audience, in which case they had to wait,
and did it with a parade of indifference which deceived no one.

And now! Here was the gentleman making believe that the lady was
bitterly disappointed at not seeing his amiable wife, who was, after
all, only the Miss Abercrombie he married at about the same time that
she herself became a Countess. And here was she adding to an insincere
acceptance of the position of chief mourner a groundless pretext that
the two or three decades were four or five--or anything you please
outside King Memory's Statutes of Limitations!--and those endearments
too long ago to count. And that the nerve case upstairs, if you please,
had no existence for her ladyship as the Miss Abercrombie she heard
Hamilton was engaged to marry, and felt rather curiou