’Wasn’t your train late?  How tired you must be —­ and how cold!  In these fine spring days we have been living as if it were midsummer, but I’m sure you oughtn’t to have had that long drive in the open trap so late.  Harvey thinks everybody as robust as himself ——­’

But the guest was in very good spirits, though manifestly fatigued.  She spoke with pleasure of the beautiful wild country, glowing in sunset.  A little tired, yes; she had not travelled so far for a long time; hut the air had braced her wonderfully, and after a night’s rest ——­

At dinner Alma behaved with the same friendliness, closely observing her guest, and listening to all she said, as if anxious not to miss a word.  Mrs. Abbott conversed in a very low voice; her manner was marked by a subdual which might partly be attributable to weariness, but seemed in a measure the result of timidity under novel circumstances.  If she looked at either of her companions, her eyes were instantly withdrawn.  A smile never lingered on her features; it came and passed, leaving the set expression of preoccupied gravity.  She wore a dress of black silk, close at the neck; and Alma perceived that it was by no means new.

An hour after the meal she begged permission to retire to her room.  The effort to talk had become impossible; she was at the end of her strength, and could hold up no longer.

When Alma came down again, she stood for a minute before the fire, smiling and silent.  Harvey had picked up a newspaper; he said nothing.

‘How very nice she is!’ fell at length from Mrs. Rolfe’s lips.

‘Astonishingly altered,’ was her husband’s murmured reply.

‘Indeed?  In what way?’

‘Looks so wretchedly ill, for one thing.’

‘We must take her about.  What do you think of doing tomorrow?’

By feminine device of indirect question, Alma obtained some understanding of the change that had come upon Mrs. Abbott during the past three years.  Harvey’s disclosures did not violate the reticence imposed upon him by that hour in which he had beheld a woman’s remorseful anguish; he spoke only of such things as were manifest to everyone who had known Mary Abbott before her husband’s death; of her social pleasures, her intellectual ambitions, suddenly overwhelmed by a great sorrow.

’I suppose she ought to be doing much better things than teaching children,’ said Alma.

‘Better things?’ repeated Harvey, musing.  ’I don’t know.  It all depends how you regard it.’

‘Is she very clever?’

‘Not appallingly,’ he answered, with a laugh.  ’It’s very possible she is doing just what she ought to be —­ neither more nor less.  Her health seems to be the weak point.’

‘Do you think she has enough to live upon?’

Harvey knitted his brows and looked uneasy.

’I hope so.  Of course it must be a very small income; but I dare say those friends of hers at Gunnersbury make life a little easier.’