her party to the
prodigy had it? They filled mine too, for that matter, just at this
juncture, long enough for me to describe myself as rendered subject by
them to a temporary loss of my thread. What _could_ pass muster with her
as an account of my reason for evoking the blighted identity of our
friend? There came constantly into her aspect, I should say, the
strangest alternatives, as I can only most conveniently call them, of
presence and absence--something like intermissions of intensity,
cessations and resumptions of life. They were like the slow flickers of
a troubled flame, breathed upon and then left, burning up and burning
down. She had really burnt down--I mean so far as her sense of things
went--while I stood there.

I stood long enough to see that it didn't in the least signify whether
or no I explained, and during this interval I found myself--to my
surprise--in receipt of still better assistance than any I had to give.
I had happened to turn, while I awkwardly enough, no doubt, rested and
shifted, to the quarter from which Mrs. Server had arrived; and there,
just at the end of the same vista, I gathered material for my proper
reply. Her eyes at this moment were fixed elsewhere, and that gave me
still a little more time, at the end of which my reference had all its
point. "I supposed you to have Brissenden in your head," I said,
"because it's evidently what he himself takes for granted. But let him
tell you!" He was already close to us: missing her at the house, he had
started again in search of her and had successfully followed. The effect
on him of coming in sight of us had been for an instant to make him hang
back as I had seen Mrs. Server hang. But he had then advanced just as
she had done; I had waited for him to reach us; and now she saw him. She
looked at him as she always looked at all of us, yet not at either of us
as if we had lately been talking of him. If it was vacancy it was
eloquent; if it was vigilance it was splendid. What was most curious, at
all events, was that it was now poor Briss who was disconcerted. He had
counted on finding her, but not on finding her with me, and I
interpreted a certain ruefulness in him as the sign of a quick, uneasy
sense that he must have been in question between us. I instantly felt
that the right thing was to let him know he had been, and I mentioned to
him, as a joke, that he had come just in time to save himself. We had
been talking of him, and I wouldn't an