e, who held her life so dear because she
felt in it such untried powers of action and emotion? She continued to
listen to Amherst's account of his work, with enough outward
self-possession to place the right comment and put the right question,
yet conscious only of the quiet strength she was absorbing from his
presence, of the way in which his words, his voice, his mere nearness
were slowly steadying and clarifying her will.

In the smoking-room, after the ladies had gone upstairs, Amherst
continued to acquit himself mechanically of his duties, against the
incongruous back-ground of his predecessor's remarkable
sporting-prints--for it was characteristic of his relation to Lynbrook
that his life there was carried on in the setting of foils and
boxing-gloves, firearms and racing-trophies, which had expressed Dick
Westmore's ideals. Never very keenly alive to his material surroundings,
and quite unconscious of the irony of this proximity, Amherst had come
to accept his wife's guests as unquestioningly as their background, and
with the same sense of their being an inevitable part of his new life.
Their talk was no more intelligible to him than the red and yellow
hieroglyphics of the racing-prints, and he smoked in silence while Mr.
Langhope discoursed to Westy Gaines on the recent sale of Chinese
porcelains at which he had been lucky enough to pick up the set of Ming
for his daughter, and Mason Winch expounded to a group of languid
listeners the essential dependence of the labouring-man on the
prosperity of Wall Street. In a retired corner, Ned Bowfort was
imparting facts of a more personal nature to a chosen following who
hailed with suppressed enjoyment the murmured mention of proper names;
and now and then Amherst found himself obliged to say to Fenton Carbury,
who with one accord had been left on his hands, "Yes, I understand the
flat-tread tire is best," or, "There's a good deal to be said for the
low tension magneto----"

But all the while his conscious thoughts were absorbed in the
remembrance of his talk with Justine Brent. He had left his wife's
presence in that state of moral lassitude when the strongest hopes droop
under the infection of indifference and hostility, and the effort of
attainment seems out of all proportion to the end in view; but as he
listened to Justine all his energies sprang to life again. Here at last
was some one who felt the urgency of his task: her every word and look
confirmed her commen