."

"I suppose so--if matters ever end."

"If, by ill-luck, the person does call. I will just see him and say that
the boy has gone."

"You, or I. I have got over all nonsense by this time. He's absolutely
nothing to me now." He took up the tradesman's book and played with it
idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and
stupid their life had become!

"Don't talk like that, though," she said uneasily. "Think how disastrous
it would be if you made a slip in speaking to him."

"Would it? It would have been disastrous once. But I expect, as a matter
of fact, that Aunt Emily has made the slip already."

His wife was displeased. "You need not talk in that cynical way. I
credit Aunt Emily with better feeling. When I was there she did mention
the matter, but only once. She, and I, and all who have any sense of
decency, know better than to make slips, or to think of making them."

Agnes kept up what she called "the family connection." She had been once
alone to Cadover, and also corresponded with Mrs. Failing. She had never
told Rickie anything about her visit nor had he ever asked her. But,
from this moment, the whole subject was reopened.

"Most certainly he knows nothing," she continued. "Why, he does not even
realize that Varden lives in our house! We are perfectly safe--unless
Aunt Emily were to die. Perhaps then--but we are perfectly safe for the
present."

"When she did mention the matter, what did she say?"

"We had a long talk," said Agnes quietly. "She told me nothing
new--nothing new about the past, I mean. But we had a long talk about
the present. I think" and her voice grew displeased again--"that you
have been both wrong and foolish in refusing to make up your quarrel
with Aunt Emily."

"Wrong and wise, I should say."

"It isn't to be expected that she--so much older and so sensitive--can
make the first step. But I know she'd he glad to see you."

"As far as I can remember that final scene in the garden, I accused her
of 'forgetting what other people were like.' She'll never pardon me for
saying that."

Agnes was silent. To her the phrase was meaningless. Yet Rickie was
correct: Mrs. Failing had resented it more than anything.

"At all events," she suggested, "you might go and see her."

"No, dear. Thank you, no."

"She is, after all--" She was going to say "your father's sister," but
the expression was scarcely a happy one, and she turned it into, "She
is, after all