h was that she was under an
engagement.

"Of course I am!" she answered. "Didn't you know it?" She appeared
astonished; but I was still more so, for Corvick had told me the exact
contrary. I didn't mention this, however; I only reminded her that I
had not been to that degree in her confidence, or even in Corvick's,
and that moreover I was not in ignorance of her mother's interdict. At
bottom I was troubled by the disparity of the two assertions; but after
a moment I felt that Corvick's was the one I least doubted. This simply
reduced me to asking myself if the girl had on the spot improvised an
engagement--vamped up an old one or dashed off a new--in order to arrive
at the satisfaction she desired. I reflected that she had resources of
which I was destitute; but she made her case slightly more intelligible
by rejoining presently: "What the state of things has been is that we
felt of course bound to do nothing in mamma's lifetime."

"But now you think you'll just dispense with your mother's consent?"

"Ah, it may not come to that!" I wondered what it might come to, and she
went on: "Poor dear, she may swallow the dose. In fact, you know," she
added with a laugh, "she really _must!_"--a proposition of which, on
behalf of every one concerned, I fully acknowledged the force.

VIII

Nothing more annoying had ever happened to me than to become aware
before Corvick's arrival in England that I should not be there to put
him through. I found myself abruptly called to Germany by the alarming
illness of my younger brother, who, against my advice, had gone to
Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the art of
portraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an allowance had
threatened to withdraw it if he should, under specious pretexts, turn
for superior truth to Paris--Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt,
the school of evil, the abyss. I deplored this prejudice at the time,
and the deep injury of it was now visible--first in the fact that it
had not saved the poor boy, who was clever, frail and foolish, from
congestion of the lungs, and second in the greater remoteness from
London to which the event condemned me. I am afraid that what was
uppermost in my mind during several anxious weeks was the sense that if
we had only been in Paris I might have run over to see Corvick. This was
actually out of the question from every point of view: my brother, whose
recovery gave us both plenty to do, was il