having nowhere whither he
would naturally go, no home, no place to which he could return as to his
own. He found himself wishing that he had not torn up Cecily's letter;
he remembered its general effect so well that he wanted to read the very
words again, in the secret hope that they would modify and soften his
memory. His own answer met and destroyed the hope; he knew that he would
have responded to anything friendly, had it been there.

Yet what did the letter mean? He interpreted it as Cecily had declared
he would. When he held Blent, he held it in peace of mind, though in
violation of law, till one came who reproached him in a living body and
with speaking eyes; faced with that, he could find no comfort in Blent.
Cecily violated no law, but she violated nature, the natural right in
him. To her then his presence would be intolerable, and she could not
find the desperate refuge that he had chosen. Her only remedy was to
forbid him the place. Her instinct drove her to that, and the instinct,
so well understood by him, so well known, was to him reason enough. She
could not feel mistress of Blent while he was there.

Indeed he had not meant to go. He had told Iver that in perfect good
faith. It would have been in bad taste for him to think of going--of
going anything like so soon as this. Whence then came his new feeling of
desolation and of hurt? It was partly that he was forbidden to go. It
was hard to realize that he could see Blent now only by another's will
or sufferance. It was even more that now it was no question of
refraining from going at once, in order to go hereafter with a better
grace. He awoke to the idea that he was never to go, and in the same
moment to the truth that he had always imagined himself going again,
that Blent had always held a place in his picture of the future, that
whatever he was doing or achieving or winning, there it was in the
background. Now it was there no more. He could almost say with Mina and
with Cecily herself, "This is the end of it."

What then of the impressions Mina had gathered from Mr Disney's
dinner-party? It can only be said that when people of impressionable
natures study others of like temperament they should not generalize from
their conduct at parties. In society dinners are eaten in disguise,
sometimes intentional, sometimes unconscious, but as a rule quite
impenetrable. If Harry's had been unconscious, if the mood had played
the man, the deception was the more c