use that night, into which Miss Fancourt's
name entered? I've often thought of it since."

"Yes; no wonder you said what you did"--Paul was careful to meet his
eyes.

"In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light then.
How could I have foreseen this hour?"

"Didn't you think it probable?"

"Upon my honour, no," said Henry St. George. "Certainly I owe you that
assurance. Think how my situation has changed."

"I see--I see," our young man murmured.

His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been broached, he
was, as a person of imagination and tact, quite ready to give every
satisfaction--being both by his genius and his method so able to enter
into everything another might feel. "But it's not only that; for
honestly, at my age, I never dreamed--a widower with big boys and with so
little else! It has turned out differently from anything one could have
dreamed, and I'm fortunate beyond all measure. She has been so free, and
yet she consents. Better than any one else perhaps--for I remember how
you liked her before you went away, and how she liked you--you can
intelligently congratulate me."

"She has been so free!" Those words made a great impression on Paul
Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to which it so
little mattered whether it was designed or casual. Of course she had
been free, and appreciably perhaps by his own act; for wasn't the
Master's allusion to her having liked him a part of the irony too? "I
thought that by your theory you disapproved of a writer's marrying."

"Surely--surely. But you don't call me a writer?"

"You ought to be ashamed," said Paul.

"Ashamed of marrying again?"

"I won't say that--but ashamed of your reasons."

The elder man beautifully smiled. "You must let me judge of them, my
good friend."

"Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine."

The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, to suggest the
unsuspected. He stared as if divining a bitterness. "Don't you think
I've been straight?"

"You might have told me at the time perhaps."

"My dear fellow, when I say I couldn't pierce futurity--!"

"I mean afterwards."

The Master wondered. "After my wife's death?"

"When this idea came to you."

"Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious as you are."

Poor Overt looked hard at him. "Are you marrying Miss Fancourt to save
me?"

"Not absolutely, but it adds to the