audible evidence. Indeed, the speaker might have
stopped there and scored. Why need he go on? "And these blue Nankin cups
are lovely. I never could go crockery-mad as some people do. But good
Nankin blue goes to my heart." And he really thought, poor fellow, that
he had done well, and been most convincing.

Alas for his flimsy house of cards! Down it came. For there had only
been four left of that blue tea-service, and he had broken one. The urn
was hissing and making its lid jump in the middle of a Crown Derby
tea-set, so polychromatic, so self-assertive in its red and blue and
gold, that no ghost of a chance was left of catching at the skirts of
colour-blindness to find a golden bridge of escape from the blunder. The
most colour-blind eyes in the world never confuse monochrome and
polychrome.

There is a sudden terror-struck misgiving on the beautiful face of Gwen,
and an uneasy note of doubt in her mother's voice, seeking by vague
speech to elude and slur over the difficulty. "The patterns are quite
alike," she says weakly. The blind man feels he has made a mistake, and
is driven to safe silence. He understands his slip more clearly when the
servant, speaking half-aside, but audibly, to the Countess, says:--"Mrs.
Masham said the blue was spoiled for four, my lady, and to bring four
of the China." Crown Derby is more distinctly China in English
vernacular than Nankin blue.

Please understand that the story is giving at great length incidents
that passed in fractions of a minute--incidents Time recorded _currente
calamo_ for Memory to rearrange at leisure.

The incident of the tea-cups was easily slurred over and forgotten.
Adrian Torrens saw the risks of attempting too much, and gave up
pretending that he could see. Irene and the Countess let the subject go;
the former most willingly, the latter with only slight reluctance. Gwen
alone dwelt upon it, or rather it dwelt upon her; her memory could not
shake it off. Do what she would the thought came back to her: "He cannot
see _at all_. I must know--I _must_ know!" She could not join in the
chit-chat which went on under the benevolent influence of the tea-leaf,
the great untier of tongues. She could only sit looking beautiful,
gazing at the deceptive eyes she felt so sure were blind to her beauty,
devising some means of extracting confession from their owner, and
thereby knowing the worst, if it was to come. It was interesting to her,
of course, to hear Mr. Torrens