rannuated youth.

She had said a word to him at sight of us, in answer to his own, and in
a minute or two they had met us. This had given me time for more than
one reflection. It had also given Mrs. Brissenden time to insist to me
on her identification, which I could see she would be much less quick to
drop than in the former cases. "We have her," she murmured; "we have
her; it's _she_!" It was by her insistence in fact that my thought was
quickened. It even felt a kind of chill--an odd revulsion--at the touch
of her eagerness. Singular perhaps that only then--yet quite certainly
then--the curiosity to which I had so freely surrendered myself began to
strike me as wanting in taste. It was reflected in Mrs. Brissenden quite
by my fault, and I can't say just what cause for shame, after so much
talk of our search and our scent, I found in our awakened and confirmed
keenness. Why in the world hadn't I found it before? My scruple, in
short, was a thing of the instant; it was in a positive flash that the
amusing question was stamped for me as none of my business. One of the
reflections I have just mentioned was that I had not had a happy hand in
making it so completely Mrs. Brissenden's. Another was, however, that
nothing, fortunately, that had happened between us really signified. For
what had so suddenly overtaken me was the consciousness of this anomaly:
that I was at the same time as disgusted as if I had exposed Mrs. Server
and absolutely convinced that I had yet _not_ exposed her.

While, after the others had greeted us and we stood in vague talk, I
caught afresh the effect of their juxtaposition, I grasped, with a
private joy that was quite extravagant--as so beyond the needed mark--at
the reassurance it offered. This reassurance sprang straight from a
special source. Brissenden's secret was so aware of itself as to be
always on the defensive. Shy and suspicious, it was as much on the
defensive at present as I had felt it to be--so far as I was
concerned--the night before. What was there accordingly in Mrs.
Server--frank and fragrant in the morning air--to correspond to any such
consciousness? Nothing whatever--not a symptom. Whatever secrets she
might have had, she had not _that_ one; she was not in the same box; the
sacred fount, in her, was not threatened with exhaustion. We all soon
re-entered the house together, but Mrs. Brissenden, during the few
minutes that followed, managed to possess herself of the subject of