uman that evening. Leonora
did not mind; she anticipated the dance with neither joy nor melancholy,
hoping nothing from it in her mood of neutral calm. John was talking
with David Dain at the entrance to the gentlemen's cloak-room, further
down the corridor. Presently, old Mr. Hawley, the doctor at Hillport,
joined the other two, and then Dain moved away, leaving John and the
doctor in conversation. Dain approached and saluted his client's wife
with characteristic sheepishness.

'Large company, I believe,' he said awkwardly. In evening dress he was
always particularly awkward.

She smiled kindly on him, thinking the while what a clumsy and
objectionable fat little man he was. She knew he admired her, and would
have given much to dance with her; but she did not care for his heavy
eyes, and she despised him because he could not screw himself up to
demand a place on her programme.

'Yes, very large company, I believe,' he said again, moving about
nervously on his toes.

'Do you know how many invitations?' she asked.

'No, I don't.'

'Dain!' John called out, 'come and listen to this.' And the lawyer
escaped from her presence like a schoolboy running out of school.

'What men!' she thought bitterly, standing neglected with all her charm
and all her distinction. 'What chivalry! What courtliness! What style!'
Her son belonged to a different race of beings.

Down the corridor came Harry Burgess deep in converse with a male
friend; the two were walking quickly. She did not choose to greet them
waiting there alone, and so she deliberately turned and put her head
within the curtains of the cloak-room as if to speak to some one inside.

'Twemlow was saying----'

It seemed to her that Harry in passing had uttered that phrase to his
companion. She flushed, and shook from head to foot. Then she reflected
that Twemlow was a name common to dozens of people in the Five Towns.
She bit her lip, surprised and angered at her own agitation. At the same
time she remembered--and why should she remember?--some gossip of John's
to the effect that Harry Burgess was under a cloud at the Bank because
he had gone to London by a day-trip on the previous Thursday without
leave. London ... perhaps....

'Am I forty--or fourteen?' she contemptuously asked herself.

She heard John and Dain laugh loudly, and the jolly voice of the old
doctor: 'Come along into the refreshment-room for a minute.' Determined
not to linger another moment for thes