and you call
it 'gossip.'"

"Precisely."

"Well, I say it's a jolly shame!... You don't suppose there _is_
anything there, do you?" This came with a sudden efflux of seriousness.

Aunt Constance had landed her fish and was blameless. Nobody could say
she had been indiscreet. She, too, could afford to be suddenly serious.
"I don't mind saying so to you, Mr. Pellew," she said, "because I know I
can rely upon you. But did you notice at dinner-time, when you said you
had tried to persuade Mr. Torrens to come down, that Gwen took upon
herself to answer for him all the way down the table?"

"By Jove--so she did! I didn't notice it at the time. At least, I mean I
did notice it at the time, but I didn't take much notice of it.
Well--you know what I mean!" As Miss Dickenson knows perfectly well, she
tolerates technical flaws of speech with a nod, and allows Mr. Pellew to
go on:--"But, I say, this will be an awful smash for the family. A blind
man!" Then he becomes aware that a conclusion has been jumped at, and
experiences relief. "But it may be all a mistake, you know." Aunt
Constance's silence has the force of speech, and calls for further
support of this surmise. "They haven't had the time. She has only known
him since yesterday. At least he had never seen her but once--he told me
so--that time just before the accident."

"Gwen is a very peculiar girl," says the lady. "A spark will fire a
train. Did you notice nothing when we came in from the flower-show?"

"Nothing whatever. Did you?"

"Little things. However, as you say, it may be all a mistake. I don't
think anything of the time, though. Some young people are volcanic. Gwen
might be."

"I saw no sign of an eruption in him--no lunacy. He chatted quite
reasonably about the division on Thursday, and the crops and the
weather. Never mentioned Gwen!"

"My dear Mr. Pellew, you really are quite pastoral. Of course, Gwen is
exactly what he would _not_ mention."

Mr. Pellew seems to concede that he is an outsider. "You think it was
Love at first sight, and that sort of thing," he says. "Well--I hope it
will wash. It don't always, you know."

"Indeed it does not." The speaker cannot resist the temptation to
flavour philosophy with a suggestion of tender regrets--a hint of a
life-drama in her own past. No questions need be answered, and will
scarcely be asked. But it is candid and courageous to say as little as
may be about it, and to favour a cheerful outlook on Life.