the gallery.
On looking around for him he was nowhere to be seen. Elfride stepped
down to the library, thinking he might have rejoined her father there.
But Mr. Swancourt, now cheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles, was
still alone, untying packets of letters and papers, and tying them up
again.

As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the
object of her interest to justify her, as a proper young lady, to
commence the active search for him that youthful impulsiveness prompted,
and as, nevertheless, for a nascent reason connected with those divinely
cut lips of his, she did not like him to be absent from her side, she
wandered desultorily back to the oak staircase, pouting and casting her
eyes about in hope of discerning his boyish figure.

Though daylight still prevailed in the rooms, the corridors were in
a depth of shadow--chill, sad, and silent; and it was only by looking
along them towards light spaces beyond that anything or anybody could be
discerned therein. One of these light spots she found to be caused by
a side-door with glass panels in the upper part. Elfride opened it, and
found herself confronting a secondary or inner lawn, separated from the
principal lawn front by a shrubbery.

And now she saw a perplexing sight. At right angles to the face of the
wing she had emerged from, and within a few feet of the door, jutted
out another wing of the mansion, lower and with less architectural
character. Immediately opposite to her, in the wall of this wing, was
a large broad window, having its blind drawn down, and illuminated by a
light in the room it screened.

On the blind was a shadow from somebody close inside it--a person in
profile. The profile was unmistakably that of Stephen. It was just
possible to see that his arms were uplifted, and that his hands held an
article of some kind. Then another shadow appeared--also in profile--and
came close to him. This was the shadow of a woman. She turned her back
towards Stephen: he lifted and held out what now proved to be a shawl or
mantle--placed it carefully--so carefully--round the lady; disappeared;
reappeared in her front--fastened the mantle. Did he then kiss her?
Surely not. Yet the motion might have been a kiss. Then both shadows
swelled to colossal dimensions--grew distorted--vanished.

Two minutes elapsed.

'Ah, Miss Swancourt! I am so glad to find you. I was looking for
you,' said a voice at her elbow--Stephen's voice. She