aised her eyebrows and remarked that Sophy was a
lucky lady to get Him, for He never went anywhere. Then Caro became
abstracted, wondering why George Tanqueray was coming, and to this
particular show.

"Will his wife be here?" she inquired.

"Dear me," said Sophy, "I never asked her. You don't somehow think of
him as married."

"I doubt," said Caro; "if he thinks so of himself. There never was a man
who looked it less."

Most singularly unattached he looked, as he stood there, beside Nina
Lempriere and Laura Gunning, drawn to them, but taking hardly more
notice of them than of any Brodrick or Levine. He was watching Jinny as
she moved about in the party. She had arrived somewhat conspicuously,
attended by Brodrick, by Winny Heron and by Eddy, with the two elder
little Levines clinging to her gown.

Jane was aware that Nina and Laura were observing her; she was aware of
a shade of anxiety in their concentration. Then she knew that Tanqueray
was there, too, that he was watching her, that his eyes never left her.

He did not seek her out after their first greeting. He preferred to
stand aside and watch her. He had arrived later and he was staying late.
Jane felt that it would become her not to stay. But Brodrick would not
let her go. He took possession of her. He paraded her as his possession
under Tanqueray's eyes; eyes that were fixed always upon Jane,
vigilantly, anxiously, as if he saw her caught in the toils.

An hour passed. The party dwindled and dissolved around them. The
strangers were gone. The hordes of Levines had scattered to their houses
in Fitzjohn's Avenue. The little Levines had been gathered away by their
nurses from the scene. Only Brodrick and his family remained, and Jane
with them, and Tanqueray who kept on looking at the two while he talked
vaguely to Levine.

Brodrick's family was not less interested or less observant. It had
accepted without surprise what it now recognized as inevitable. It could
no longer hope that Hugh would cease from his insane pursuit of Jane
Holland, after making the thing thus public, flourishing his intentions
in the face of his family. With a dexterity in man[oe]uvre, an audacity,
an obstinacy that was all his own, Hugh had resisted every attempt to
separate him from Miss Holland. He only let go his hold when Sophy
Levine, approaching with an admirable air of innocence in guile,
announced that Baby was being put to bed. She suggested that Jane might
like to see h