scene of tragic dissensions. The memory of
them seemed to be shut out into the night with the closing and barring
of its doors.

At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame de Chantelle and
Effie. The little girl, catching sight of Darrow, raced down the
drawing-rooms to meet him, and returned in triumph on his shoulder. Anna
looked at them with a smile. Effie, for all her graces, was chary of
such favours, and her mother knew that in according them to Darrow she
had admitted him to the circle where Owen had hitherto ruled.

Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle the explanation of
his sudden return from England. On reaching London, he told her, he had
found that the secretary he was to have replaced was detained there by
the illness of his wife. The Ambassador, knowing Darrow's urgent reasons
for wishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his going back,
and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve his colleague; and he had
jumped into the first train, without even waiting to telegraph the news
of his release. He spoke naturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice,
taking his tea from Effie, helping himself to the toast she handed, and
stooping now and then to stroke the dozing terrier. And suddenly, as
Anna listened to his explanation, she asked herself if it were true.

The question, of course, was absurd. There was no possible reason why he
should invent a false account of his return, and every probability that
the version he gave was the real one. But he had looked and spoken in
the same way when he had answered her probing questions about Sophy
Viner, and she reflected with a chill of fear that she would never again
know if he were speaking the truth or not. She was sure he loved her,
and she did not fear his insincerity as much as her own distrust of him.
For a moment it seemed to her that this must corrupt the very source of
love; then she said to herself: "By and bye, when I am altogether his,
we shall be so near each other that there will be no room for any
doubts between us." But the doubts were there now, one moment lulled to
quiescence, the next more torturingly alert. When the nurse appeared to
summon Effie, the little girl, after kissing her grandmother, entrenched
herself on Darrow's knee with the imperious demand to be carried up to
bed; and Anna, while she laughingly protested, said to herself with a
pang: "Can I give her a father about whom I think such things?"

The though