HE moved a minute about the hall; then he dropped upon a sofa with a sense of exhaustion and a sudden need of rest; he stretched himself, closing his eyes, glad to be alone, glad above all to make sure that he could lie still. He wished to show himself he was not nervous; he took up a position with the purpose not to budge till Mrs. Beever should come back. His house was in an odd con dition, with luncheon pompously served and no one able to go to it. Poor Julia was in a predicament, poor Rose in another, and poor Mr. Vidal, fasting in the garden, in a greater one than either. Tony sighed as he thought of this dispersal, but he stiffened himself resolutely on his couch. He wouldn’t go in alone, and he couldn’t even enjoy Mrs. Beever. It next occurred to him that he could still less enjoy her little friend, the child he had promised to turn away; on which he gave a sigh that represented partly privation and partly resig nation partly also a depressed perception of the fact that he had never in all his own healthy life been less eager for a meal. Meanwhile, however, the attempt to stop pacing the floor was a success: he felt as if in closing his eyes he destroyed the vision that had scared him. He was cooler, he was easier, and he liked the smell of flowers in the dusk. What was droll, when he gave himself up to it, was the sharp sense of lassitude; it had dropped on him out of the blue and it showed him how a sudden alarm such as, after all, he had had could drain a fellow in an hour of half his vitality. He wondered whether, if he might be undisturbed a little, the result of this surrender wouldn’t be to make him delightfully lose consciousness.

He never knew afterwards whether it was in the midst of his hope or on the inner edge of a doze just achieved that he became aware of a footfall betraying an uncertain advance. He raised his lids to it and saw before him the pretty girl from the other house, whom, for a moment before he moved, he lay there looking at. He immediately recognised that what had roused him was the fact that, noise lessly and for a few seconds, her eyes had rested on his face. She uttered a blushing “Oh!” which deplored this effect of her propinquity and which brought Tony straight to his feet. “Ah, good morning! How d’ye do?” Everything came back to him but her name. “ Excuse my attitude I didn’t hear you come in.”

“When I saw you asleep I’m afraid I kept the footman from speaking.” Jean Martle was much embarrassed, but it contributed in the happiest way to her animation. “ I came in because he told me that Cousin Kate’s here.”

“Oh yes, she’s here she thought you might arrive. Do sit down,” Tony added with his prompt instinct of what, in his own house, was due from a man of some confidence to a girl of none at all. It operated before he could check it, and Jean was as passive to it as if he had tossed her a command; but as soon as she was seated, to obey him, in a high-backed, wide-armed Venetian chair which made a gilded cage for her flutter, and he had again placed himself not in the same position on the sofa opposite, he recalled the request just preferred by Mrs. Beever. He was to send her straight home; yes, it was to be invited instantly to retrace her steps that she sat there panting and pink.

Meanwhile she was very upright and very serious; she seemed very anxious to explain. “ I thought it better to come, since she wasn’t there. I had gone off to walk home with the Marshes I was gone rather long; and when I came back she had left the house the servants told me she must be here.”

Tony could only meet with the note of hospitality so logical a plea. “ Oh, it’s all right Mrs. Beever’s with Mrs. Bream.” It was apparently all wrong he must tell her she couldn’t stay; but there was a prior complication in his memory of having invited her to luncheon. “ I wrote to your cousin I hoped you’d come. Unfortunately she’s not staying her self.”

“Ah, then, I mustn’t!” Jean spoke with lucidity, but without quitting her chair.

Tony hesitated. “ She’ll be a little while yet my wife has something to say to her.”

The girl had fixed her eyes on the floor; she might have been reading there the fact that for the first time in her life she was regularly calling on a gentleman. Since this was the singular case she must at least call properly. Her manner revealed an earnest effort to that end, an effort visible even in the fear of a liberty if she should refer too familiarly to Mrs. Bream. She cast about her with intensity for something that would show sympathy without freedom, and, as a result, presently produced: “I came an hour ago, and I saw Miss Armiger. She told me she would bring down the baby.”

“But she didn’t? ”

“No, Cousin Kate thought it wouldn’t do.”

Tony was happily struck. “ It will do it shall do. Should you like to see her? ”

“I thought I should like it very much. It’s very kind of you.”

Tony jumped up. “ I’ll show her to you myself.” He went over to ring a bell; then, as he came back, he added: “ I delight in showing her. I think she’s the wonder of the world.”

“That’s what babies always seem to me,” said Jean. “ It’s so absorbing to watch them.”

These remarks were exchanged with great gravity, with stifftsh pauses, while Tony hung about till his ring should be answered.

“Absorbing?” he repeated. “ Isn’t it, preposter ously? Wait till you’ve watched Effie! ”

His visitor preserved for a while a silence which might have indicated that, with this injunction, her waiting had begun; but at last she said with the same simplicity: “ I’ve a sort of original reason for my interest in her.”

“Do you mean the illness of her poor mother? ” He saw that she meant nothing so patronising, though her countenance fell with the reminder of this misfortune: she heard with awe that the unconscious child was menaced. “ That’s a very good reason,” he declared, to relieve her. “ But so much the better if you’ve got another too. I hope you’ll never want for one to be kind to her.”

She looked more assured. “ I’m just the person always to be.”

“Just the person?” Tony felt that he must draw her out. She was now arrested, however, by the arrival of the footman, to whom he immediately turned. “ Please ask Gorham to be as good as to bring down the child.”

“Perhaps Gorham will think it won’t do,” Jean suggested as the servant went off.

“Oh, she’s as proud of her as I am! But if she doesn’t approve I’ll take you upstairs. That’ll be because, as you say you’re just the person. I haven’t the least doubt of it but you were going to tell me why.”

Jean treated it as if it were almost a secret. “Because she was born on my day.”

“Your birthday? ”

“My birthday the twenty — fourth.”

“Oh I see; that’s charming that’s delightful! ” The circumstance had not quite all the subtlety she had beguiled him into looking for, but her amusing belief in it, which halved the date like a succulent pear, mingled oddly, to make him quickly feel that it had enough, with his growing sense that Mrs. Beever’s judgment of her hair was a libel. “ It’s a most extraordinary coincidence it makes a most interesting tie. Do, therefore, I beg you, whenever you keep you anniversary, keep also a little hers.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Jean. Then she added, still shy, yet suddenly almost radiant: “ I shall always send her something! ”

“She shall do the same to you!” This idea had a charm even for Tony, who determined on the spot, quite sincerely, that he would, for the first years at least, make it his own charge. “ You’re her very first friend,” he smiled.

“Am I?” Jean thought it wonderful news. “Before she has even seen me! ”

“O............