d
to the world, he had begun by degrees to find himself in a confidential
position with her. "We know each other's secrets," she would say to him
with a meaning look. He was caught in her snare. On the other hand an
indefinite visit prolonged and endless had never come within his
calculation. He did not know how to put an end to the situation--perhaps
as it was an amusement for his evenings to see the siren spread her
snares, and even to be more or less caught in them, he did not sincerely
wish to put an end to it as yet. He was caught in them more or less, but
never so much as to be unaware of the skill with which the snares were
laid, which would have amused him whatever had been the seriousness of
the attendant circumstances. He did not, however, allow that he had no
desire to make an end of these circumstances, but only said to himself,
with a shrug of his shoulders, how could he do it? He could not send his
old friend away. He could not but be civil and attentive to her so long
as she was under his roof. It distressed him that Lucy should feel it,
as this morning's experience proved her to do, but how could he help it?
He made that other sacrifice to Lucy by way of reconciling her to the
inevitable, but he could do no more. When you invite a friend to be your
guest, he said to himself, you must be more or less at the mercy of that
friend. If he (or she) stays too long, what can you do? Sir Tom was not
the sort of man to be reduced to helplessness by such a difficulty. Yet
this was what he said to himself.

It vexed him, however, that Lucy should feel it so much. He could not
throw off this uneasy feeling. He had stopped her mouth as one might
stop a child's mouth with a sugar plum; but he could not escape from the
consciousness that Lucy felt her domain invaded, and that her feeling
was just. He had thrown himself into the great chair, and was pondering
not what to do, but the impossibility of doing anything, when Williams,
his confidential man, who knew all about the Contessa almost as well as
he did, suddenly appeared before him. Williams had been all over the
world with Sir Tom before he settled down as his butler at the Hall. He
was, therefore, not one who could be dismissed summarily if he
interfered in any matter out of his sphere. He appeared on the other
side of Sir Tom's writing-table with a face as long as his arm, the face
with which Sir Tom was so well acquainted--the same face with which he
had a hundr