.

Suddenly Antony spoke.

"You may as well carry out your original programme," he said, and almost
good-humouredly annoyed at his own swift change of mood.

The library door opened.

"Mr. Spencer Curtis," announced Jessop on a note of solemn gloom.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRIFLES

It was not till a good many hours later that the anticlimax of the recent
situation struck Trix. Excitement had prevented her from realizing it at
first. In the excitement of what the thing stood for, she had overlooked
the utter triviality of the thing itself. When, later, the two separated
themselves in a measure, and she looked at the thing as apart from what
it indicated, the ludicrousness of it struck her with astounding force.

Nicholas Danver would give a tea-party.

And it was this, this small commonplace statement, which had kept the
Duchessa, Miss Tibbutt, Doctor Hilary, and herself in solemn and amazed
confabulation for at least two hours. It was infinitely more amazing even
than the whole story of the past months, and Trix had given that in
fairly detailed fashion, avoiding the Duchessa's eyes, however, whenever
she mentioned Antony's name. Yes; it was what the tiny fact stood for
that had astounded them; though now, with the fact in a measure separated
from its meaning, Trix saw the almost absurdity of it.

Fifteen years of a living death to terminate in a tea-party!

It was an anticlimax which made her almost hysterical to contemplate. She
felt that the affair ought to have wound up in some great movement, in
some dignified action or fine speech, and it had descended to the merely
ludicrous, or what, in view of those fifteen years, appeared the merely
ludicrous. And she had been the instigator of it, and Doctor Hilary had
called it a miracle. Which it truly was.

And yet, banishing the ludicrous from her mind, it was so entirely
simple. There was not the faintest blare of trumpets, not a whisper even
of an announcing voice, merely the fact that a solitary man would once
more welcome friends beneath his roof.

The only real touch of excitement about the business would be when Antony
Gray learnt the news, and he and the Duchessa met. And yet even that
somehow lost its significance before the absorbing yet quiet fact of
Nicholas's own resurrection.

"He is looking forward to it like a child," Trix had said.

And Miss Tibbutt had suddenly taken off her spectacles and wiped them.

"It's an odd li