sage and looked up to make
a remark to May Dashwood, when she became aware of Gwen's face.

"My dear, you looked just like a melancholy peach. Go to bed!"

Gwen smiled and tumbled her pins into her knitting. She rose and said
"Good night," glad to be released. Outside the drawing-room she stood
holding her breath to hear if there was any sound audible from the
library. She heard nothing. She moved over the soft carpet and listened
again, at the door. She could hear the Warden's deep, masculine
voice--like the vibration of an organ, and then a higher voice, but what
they said Gwen could not tell. She turned away and went up to bed. She
was beginning to lose that feeling of not being afraid of the Warden. He
was becoming more and more what he had been at first, an impressive and
alarming personage, a human being entirely remote from her understanding
and experience. At moments during dinner when she had glanced at him, he
had seemed to her to be like a handsomely carved figure animated by some
living force completely unknown to her. That such an incomprehensible
being should become her husband was surely unlikely--if not impossible!
Gwen's thoughts became more and more confused. Notwithstanding this
confusion in what (if compelled to describe it) she would have called
her soul, she closed her eyes and settled upon her pillow. She was
conscious that she was disappointed and not happy. Then she suddenly
became indifferent to her fate--saw in her mind's eye a hat--it absorbed
her. The hat was lying on a chair. It was trimmed like some other hat.
Then the hat disappeared, and Gwen was asleep.

As soon as Gwendolen had left the drawing-room Lady Dashwood closed her
book and looked at her niece.

"Now," said Lady Dashwood, "I begin to think that I was unnecessarily
alarmed about Jim. But it may be because you are here--giving me moral
support." Lady Dashwood spoke the words "moral support" with great
firmness. Having once said it and seen that it was wrong, she meant to
stick to it.

"I wonder," began Mrs. Dashwood, and then she remained silent and looked
hard at her knitting.

Lady Dashwood still stared at her niece. But May did not conclude her
sentence, if indeed she had meant to say any more.

"Why, you haven't noticed anything?" asked Lady Dashwood.

"Nothing!" said May, and she knitted on.

"To-day," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim has been practically invisible except
at meals, but you've no idea how busy he is just n