said she as she left the room, "it isn't any use. I am utterly miserable
about it."

And she was, though she herself scarcely knew yet how miserable. So long
as she had someone else to speak to, the whole deadly truth lingered on
the threshold of her mind and would not enter. She ascribed weight to
opinions she would have disregarded had she had no stake on the chance
of their correctness.

She caught at the narration of her maid Lutwyche, prolonging her
hair-combing for talk's sake. Lutwyche had the peculiarity of always
accommodating her pronunciation to the class she was speaking with,
elaborating it for the benefit of those socially above her. So her
inquiry how the gentleman was getting on was accounted for by her having
seen him from the guardian. Speaking with an equal, she would have said
garden. She had seen him therefrom, and been struck by his appearance of
recovered vigour, especially by his visible enjoyment of the land
escape. She would have said landscape to Cook. Pronounced anyhow, her
words were a comfort to her young mistress, defending her a very little
against the black thoughts that assailed her. Similarly, Miss Lutwyche's
understanding that Mr. Torrens would come to table this evening was a
flattering unction to her distressed soul, and she never questioned her
omniscient handmaid's accuracy. On the contrary, she utilised a memory
of some chance words of her mother to Irene, suggesting that her brother
might be "up to coming down" that evening, as a warrant for
replying:--"I believe so."

Nevertheless, she had no hope of seeing him make his appearance in the
brilliantly illuminated Early Jacobean drawing-room, where at least two
of the upstairs servants had to light wax tapers for quite ten minutes
at dusk, to be even with a weakness of the Earl's for wax-candlelight
and no other. And when Irene appeared without him, her "Oh dear!--your
brother wasn't up to coming down, then?" was spiritless and perfunctory.
Nor did she believe her friend's "No--we thought it best to be on the
safe side." For she knew now why it was that this absence from the
evening banquet--"family dinner-table" is too modest a phrase--had been
so strenuously insisted on. There was no earthly reason why Irene's
brother should not have dressed and sat at table. Were there no sofas in
the Early Jacobean drawing-room? There was no reason against his
presence at all except that his absolute blindness must needs have been
manifest