name stiffly. It was under tutelage, not
spontaneously uttered. Letting it come before would have given him a
better position. But then, how if she had disallowed it? There was no
end to the ticklishness of their relation.

A _modus vivendi_ was, however, established. She could recapitulate
without endangering it. "You _will_ try to make Adrian see Gwen's
motives as I see them. It is quite possible that it will make no
difference in the end. If so, we must bow to the decrees of Providence,
I suppose. But I am sure you agree with me that he ought not to remain
in the dark. As I dare say you know, I am taking Gwen to Vienna for a
time. If they are both of a mind at the end of that time--well, I
suppose it can't be helped! But you must not be--I see you are
not--surprised at my view of the case."

Sir Hamilton assented to everything, promised everything, saw the lady
into her carriage, and returned, uncomfortable, to review his position
before the drawing-room fire in solitude. He did not go upstairs to the
nerve case. He would let his visitor die down before he discharged that
liability. He broke a large coal, and made a flare, and rang the bell
for lights, to show how little the late interview had thrown him out of
gear. But it _had_ done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancester was
well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years
older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have
disillusioned her if the Earl had not--for that was what he read between
her lines--she had left something indefinable behind, which he was
pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was
_there_, for all that.

Just one little tender squeeze of that beautiful hand, instead of that
candid, overwhelming wrestler's grip and double-knock handshake, would
have been so delightful.

He caught himself thinking more of his handsome visitor and her easy
self-mastery, compared with his own awkwardness and embarrassment, than
of her errand and the troublesome task she had devolved on him of
illuminating his son's mind about the possible self-sacrificial motives
of her daughter. His thoughts _would_ wander back to their Romeo and
Juliet period, and make comparisons between this _now_ of worldly-wise
maturities and the days when he would have been the glove upon that
hand, that he might touch that cheek. He recalled his first meeting with
the fascinating young beauty in her first season