far as that, but I
insisted that till the contrary was proved I should view it as too fond
an imagination. I didn't, I confess, say--I didn't at that time quite
know--all I felt. Deep down, as Miss Erme would have said, I was uneasy,
I was expectant. At the core of my personal confusion--for my curiosity
lived in its ashes--was the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would at
last probably come out somewhere. He made, in defence of his credulity,
a great point of the fact that from of old, in his study of this genius,
he had caught whiffs and hints of he didn't know what, faint wandering
notes of a hidden music. That was just the rarity, that was the charm:
it fitted so perfectly into what I reported.

If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea I
daresay it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of Miss Erme's
mamma. The hours spent there by Corvick were present to my fancy as
those of a chessplayer bent with a silent scowl, all the lamplit winter,
over his board and his moves. As my imagination filled it out the
picture held me fast. On the other side of the table was a ghostlier
form, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredly but a little
wearily secure--an antagonist who leaned back in his chair with his
hands in his pockets and a smile on his fine clear face. Close to
Corvick, behind him, was a girl who had begun to strike me as pale and
wasted and even, on more familiar view, as rather handsome, and who
rested on his shoulder and hung upon his moves. He would take up a
chessman and hold it poised a while over one of the little squares,
and then he would put it back in its place with a long sigh of
disappointment. The young lady, at this, would slightly but uneasily
shift her position and look across, very hard, very long, very
strangely, at their dim participant. I had asked them at an early stage
of the business if it mightn't contribute to their success to have some
closer communication with him. The special circumstances would surely
be held to have given me a right to introduce them. Corvick immediately
replied that he had no wish to approach the altar before he had prepared
the sacrifice. He quite agreed with our friend both as to the sport and
as to the honour--he would bring down the animal with his own rifle.
When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said after an
hesitation: "No; I'm ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. She'd give
anything to see him; she sa