day. She was
back well before breakfast, to go up to her room and come down again as
if for the first time. The Colonel, meeting her on the stairs, or in the
hall, would say: "Ah, my dear! just beaten you! Slept well?" And, while
her lips touched his cheek, slanted at the proper angle for uncles, he
never dreamed that she had been three miles already through the dew.

Now that she was in the throes of an indecision, whose ending, one way
or the other, must be so tremendous, now that she was in the very swirl,
she let no sign at all escape her; the Colonel and even his wife were
deceived into thinking that after all no great harm had been done. It
was grateful to them to think so, because of that stewardship at Monte
Carlo, of which they could not render too good account. The warm sleepy
days, with a little croquet and a little paddling on the river, and much
sitting out of doors, when the Colonel would read aloud from Tennyson,
were very pleasant. To him--if not to Mrs. Ercott--it was especially
jolly to be out of Town 'this confounded crowded time of year.' And so
the days of early June went by, each finer than the last.

And then Cramier came down, without warning on a Friday evening. It
was hot in London...the session dull.... The Jubilee turning everything
upside down.... They were lucky to be out of Town!

A silent dinner--that!

Mrs. Ercott noticed that he drank wine like water, and for minutes at a
time fixed his eyes, that looked heavy as if he had not been sleeping,
not on his wife's face but on her neck. If Olive really disliked and
feared him--as John would have it--she disguised her feelings very well!
For so pale a woman she was looking brilliant that night. The sun had
caught her cheeks, perhaps. That black low-cut frock suited her, with
old Milanese-point lace matching her skin so well, and one carnation,
of darkest red, at her breast. Her eyes were really sometimes like black
velvet. It suited pale women to have those eyes, that looked so black
at night! She was talking, too, and laughing more than usual. One would
have said: A wife delighted to welcome her husband! And yet there was
something--something in the air, in the feel of things--the lowering
fixity of that man's eyes, or--thunder coming, after all this heat!
Surely the night was unnaturally still and dark, hardly a breath of air,
and so many moths out there, passing the beam of light, like little pale
spirits crossing a river! Mrs. Ercott sm