ed to
Honora that he spoke as one who recalls departed glories, who held a
conviction that the Lowestoft would never be used again.

Although by unalterable custom he submitted, at breakfast, the menus of
the day to Hugh, the old butler came afterwards to Honora's boudoir
during her struggle with the account books. Sometimes she would look up
and surprise his eyes fixed upon her, and one day she found at her elbow
a long list made out in a painstaking hand.

"What's this, Starling?" she asked.

"If you please, madame," he answered, "they're the current prices in the
markets--here."

She thanked him. Nor was his exquisite delicacy in laying stress upon the
locality lost upon her. That he realized the magnitude--for her--of the
task to which she had set herself; that he sympathized deeply with the
spirit which had undertaken it, she was as sure as though he had said so.
He helped her thus in a dozen unobtrusive ways, never once recognizing
her ignorance; but he made her feel the more that that ignorance was a
shameful thing not to be spoken of. Speculations upon him were
irresistible. She was continually forgetting the nature of his situation,
and he grew gradually to typify in her mind the Grenoble of the past. She
knew his principles as well as though he had spoken them--which he never
did. For him, the world had become awry; he abhorred divorce, and that
this modern abomination had touched the house of Chiltern was a calamity
that had shaken the very foundations of his soul. In spite of this, he
had remained. Why? Perhaps from habit, perhaps from love of the family
and Hugh,--perhaps to see!

And having stayed, fascination had laid hold of him,--of that she was
sure,--and his affections had incomprehensibly become involved. He was as
one assisting at a high tragedy not unworthy of him, the outcome of which
he never for an instant doubted. And he gave Honora the impression that
he alone, inscrutable, could have pulled aside the curtain and revealed
the end.

CHAPTER XIII

OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES

Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the white
skirt that her maid presented.

"I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde," she said.

The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begun
with the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the time
was at hand when she must face the world. Might it not be delayed a
little while--a week longer?