had turned away
from him to the open window. She made no sign of suffering but for the
troubled rising and falling of her breast. He saw in her a woman
mortally smitten, but smitten, he imagined, in her vanity.

"Have I persuaded you," he said quietly, "to give up those Sonnets?"

"You shall have a copy. If Mr. Rickman wants the original he must come
for it himself."

"Thanks." Maddox had ceased to be truculent, having gained his end.
His blue eyes twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's
awfully nice of you. But--couldn't you make it seem a little more
spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you
for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement
of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her generosity to
shelter his indiscretion.

Lucia smiled even in her anguish. "That I can well imagine. The copy
shall be sent to him."

And Maddox considered himself dismissed. He wondered why she called
him back to ask for the number of that house in Howland Street.

That afternoon she dragged herself there, that she might torture her
eyes because they had not seen, and her heart because it had not felt.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

At Jewdwine's heart there was trouble and in his mind perfect peace.
For he knew his own mind at last, though he was still a little
indefinite as to the exact condition of his heart.

Three days after Maddox's extraordinary disclosures Lucia had become
most obviously and inconsiderately ill; and had given her cousin Edith
a great deal of trouble as well as a severe fright, till Kitty, also
frightened, had carried her off to Devonshire out of the house of the
Jewdwines. To Horace the working of events was on the whole
beneficent. Lucia's change of attitude, her illness, her abrupt
departure, though too unpleasant for his fastidious mind to dwell
upon, had committed that mind irretrievably to the path of prudence.

So prudent was he, that of his saner matrimonial project the world in
general took no note. Secure of the affections of Miss Fulcher, he had
propitiated rumour by the fiction of his engagement to Lucia. Rumour,
adding a touch of certainty to the story, had handed it on to Rickman
by way of Maddox and Miss Roots. He there upon left off beautifying
his house at Ealing, and agreed with Maddox that after Paris in
November they should go on to Italy together, and that he would winter
there for his health.

But by November the