ey of life to him, and now shook him as
the turning of a rusted lock shakes a long-closed door--to hear her name
spoken familiarly, affectionately, as one speaks of some one who may
come into the room the next moment--gave him a shock that was half pain,
and half furtive unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts are
mostly projected outward, on the world of external activities, may be
more moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who are
perpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst had
foreseen from the first that Mrs. Ansell might mean to speak of his
wife; but though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talk
short, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained to hear her out.

Mrs. Ansell, having sped her shaft, followed its flight through lowered
lashes, and saw that it had struck a vulnerable point; but she was far
from assuming that the day was won.

"I believe," she continued, "that Mr. Langhope has said something of
this to you already, and my only excuse for speaking is that I
understood he had not been successful in his appeal."

No one but Mrs. Ansell--and perhaps she knew it--could have pushed so
far beyond the conventional limits of discretion without seeming to
overstep them by a hair; and she had often said, when pressed for the
secret of her art, that it consisted simply in knowing the pass-word.
That word once spoken, she might have added, the next secret was to give
the enemy no time for resistance; and though she saw the frown reappear
between Amherst's eyes, she went on, without heeding it: "I entreat you,
Mr. Amherst, to let Cicely see your wife."

He reddened again, and pushed back his chair, as if to rise.

"No--don't break off like that! Let me say a word more. I know your
answer to Mr. Langhope--that you and Justine are no longer together. But
I thought of you as a man to sink your personal relations at such a
moment as this."

"To sink them?" he repeated vaguely: and she went on: "After all, what
difference does it make?"

"What difference?" He stared in unmitigated wonder, and then answered,
with a touch of irony: "It might at least make the difference of my
being unwilling to ask a favour of her."

Mrs. Ansell, at this, raised her eyes and let them rest full on his.
"Because she has done you so great a one already?"

He stared again, sinking back automatically into his chair. "I don't
understand you."

"No." She smiled a little, as if to giv