much. And she got on
very well, and she liked London, and she liked the shops. She mentioned
neither Hughs nor Mrs. Hughs. In all this rigmarole, told with such
obvious purpose, stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning
quickness to see the effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never
quite out of her eyes when they were fixed on Hilary.

This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature
had bestowed on him. It touched one of the least conceited and most
amiable of men profoundly. He felt it an honour that anything so young
as this should regard him in that way. He had always tried to keep
out of his mind that which might have given him the key to her special
feeling for himself--those words of the painter of still life: "She's
got a story of some sort." But it flashed across him suddenly like an
inspiration: If her story were the simplest of all stories--the direct,
rather brutal, love affair of a village boy and girl--would not she,
naturally given to surrender, be forced this time to the very antithesis
of that young animal amour which had brought on her such, sharp
consequences?

But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the grossest
violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it ungratefully. Yet
it was as if for the purpose of saying, "You are a nuisance to me, or
worse!" that he had asked her to his study. Her presence had hitherto
chiefly roused in him the half-amused, half-tender feelings of one who
strokes a foal or calf, watching its soft uncouthness; now, about to
say good-bye to her, there was the question of whether that was the only
feeling.

Miranda, stealing out between her master and his visitor, growled.

The little model, who was stroking a china ash-tray with her ungloved,
inky fingers, muttered, with a smile, half pathetic, half cynical: "She
doesn't like me! She knows I don't belong here. She hates me to come.
She's jealous!"

Hilary said abruptly:

"Tell me! Have you made any friends since you've been in London?"

The girl flashed a look at him that said:

'Could I make you jealous?'

Then, as though guilty of afar too daring thought, drooped her head, and
answered:

"No."

"Not one?"

The little model repeated almost passionately: "No. I don't want any
friends; I only want to be let alone."

Hilary began speaking rapidly.

"But these Hughs have not left you alone. I told you, I thought you
ought to move; I've taken anot