"You were certainly," she went on with more reserve, "entitled to
direct news. Ours came late last night: I'm not sure otherwise I
shouldn't have gone to you. But you're coming," she asked, "to _me?_"

He had had a minute by this time to think further, and the window of
the brougham was still within range. Her rich "me," reaching him
moreover through the mild damp, had the effect of a thump on his chest.
"Squared," Aunt Maud? She was indeed squared, and the extent of it just
now perversely enough took away his breath. His look from where they
stood embraced the aperture at which the person sitting in the carriage
might have shown, and he saw his interlocutress, on her side,
understand the question in it, which he moreover then uttered. "Shall
you be alone?" It was, as an immediate instinctive parley with the
image of his condition that now flourished in her, almost hypocritical.
It sounded as if he wished to come and overflow to her, yet this was
exactly what he didn't. The need to overflow had suddenly--since the
night before--dried up in him, and he had never been aware of a deeper
reserve.

But she had meanwhile largely responded. "Completely alone. I should
otherwise never have dreamed; feeling, dear friend, but too much!"
Failing on her lips what she felt came out for him in the offered hand
with which she had the next moment condolingly pressed his own. "Dear
friend, dear friend!"--she was deeply "with" him, and she wished to be
still more so: which was what made her immediately continue. "Or
wouldn't you this evening, for the sad Christmas it makes us, dine with
me _tete-a-tete?_"

It put the thing off, the question of a talk with her--making the
difference, to his relief, of several hours; but it also rather
mystified him. This however didn't diminish his need of caution. "Shall
you mind if I don't tell you at once?"

"Not in the least--leave it open: it shall be as you may feel, and you
needn't even send me word. I only _will_ mention that to-day, of all
days, I shall otherwise sit there alone."

Now at least he could ask. "Without Miss Croy?"

"Without Miss Croy. Miss Croy," said Mrs. Lowder, "is spending her
Christmas in the bosom of her more immediate family."

He was afraid, even while he spoke, of what his face might show. "You
mean she has left you?"

Aunt Maud's own face for that matter met the enquiry with a
consciousness in which he saw a reflexion of events. He was made sure
by it, even at