Miss Viner," Anna repeated, looking at her kindly.

The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the threshold.

"I'm so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and I thought
she might have left it here. I need it to prepare for tomorrow's
lesson."

"Is this it?" Darrow asked, picking up a book from the table.

"Oh, thank you!"

He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.

"Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner," Anna said; and as the girl turned
back, she went on with her quiet smile: "Effie told us you'd gone to
your room with a headache. You mustn't sit up over tomorrow's lessons if
you don't feel well."

Sophy's blush deepened. "But you see I have to. Latin's one of my weak
points, and there's generally only one page of this book between me and
Effie." She threw the words off with a half-ironic smile. "Do excuse my
disturbing you," she added.

"You didn't disturb me," Anna answered. Darrow perceived that she was
looking intently at the girl, as though struck by something tense and
tremulous in her face, her voice, her whole mien and attitude. "You DO
look tired. You'd much better go straight to bed. Effie won't be sorry
to skip her Latin."

"Thank you--but I'm really all right," murmured Sophy Viner. Her glance,
making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an appreciable instant on
the intimate propinquity of arm-chair and sofa-corner; then she turned
back to the door.

BOOK III

XVII

At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle's slender monologue was
thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was still in the same state of
moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even
Anna's face, to her friend's vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a
personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.

She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow's with
their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his
tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.

He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless
due to causes with which he was not directly concerned. He knew the
question of Owen's marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt
alteration in the young man's mood made it seem probable that he was
himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance, For a moment it
occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in
preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandso