ve my fellow suffer all I didn't
suffer in meeting the girl he knows his mother wants him to marry. I got
on very well with those ladies. Mrs. Andrews is the mother of innocence,
but she isn't innocence. She managed to talk of my story without asking
about the person who wanted to anticipate the conclusion. That was what
you call complex. She was insincere; it was the only thing she wanted to
talk about."

"I don't believe it, Philip. But what did Miss Andrews talk about?"

"Well, she is rather an optimistic conscience. She talked about books
and plays that some people do not think are quite proper. I have
a notion that, where the point involved isn't a fact of her own
experience, she is not very severe about it. You think that would be
quite safe for me?"

"Philip, I don't like your making fun of her!"

"Oh, she wasn't insipid; she was only limpid. I really like her, and, as
for reverencing her, of course I feel that in a way she is sacred." He
added, after a breath, "Too sacred. We none of us can expect to marry
Eve before the Fall now; perhaps we have got over wanting to."

"You are very perverse, my dear. But you will get over that."

"Don't take away my last defence, mother."

Verrian began to go rather regularly to the Andrews house, or, at least,
he was accused of doing it by Miss Macroyd when, very irregularly, he
went one day to see her. "How did you know it?" he asked.

"I didn't say I knew it. I only wished to know it. Now I am satisfied.
I met another friend of yours on Sunday." She paused for him to ask
who; but he did not ask. "I see you are dying to know what friend: Mr.
Bushwick."

"Oh, he's a good-fellow. I wonder I don't run across him."

"Perhaps that's because you never call on Miss Shirley." Miss Macroyd
waited for this to take effect, but he kept a glacial surface towards
her, and she went on:

"They were walking together in the park at noon. I suppose they had been
to church together."

Verrian manifested no more than a polite interest in the fact. He
managed so well that he confirmed Miss Macroyd in a tacit conjecture.
She went on: "Miss Shirley was looking quite blooming for her. But so
was he, for that matter. Why don't you ask if they inquired for you?"

"I thought you would tell me without."

"I will tell you if he did. He was very cordial in his inquiries; and I
had to pretend, to gratify him, that you were very well. I implied that
you came here every Tuesday, but your Thur