eside him.

"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she.

"It was a dead failure, Pussy."

"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party."

Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she
did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a
woman of exquisite tact.

"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream--a happy dream."

CHAPTER XII

"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me."

Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and
hostess of the night before.

"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that
she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.

"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had
not.

"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her.

"Oh well, we needn't go into that."

It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind
those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not
wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to
the discussion.

She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble
had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned,
somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She
wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people.

She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an
account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into
life.)

"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question.

"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much
indeed."

"I don't believe you."

"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?"

"The Hannays were there. It was enough."

"You liked Mr. Gorst?"

"Yes. He was different."

"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him."

"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear."

"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy."

"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to
me."

"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a
good friend to him."

"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?"

"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay."

"It's intolerable!" said Anne.

"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike
so much sto