“Yes,” he exclaimed, “that’s Israel Simpson—­you couldn’t miss him.  How I used to hate him when I was a boy!  I haven’t quite got over it yet.  I used to outdo myself to make things uncomfortable for him when he came up here—­I think it was because he always seemed to be truckling.  He was ridiculously servile and polite in those days.  He’s changed since,” added Hugh, dryly.  “He must quite have forgotten by this time that the General made him.”

“Is—­is he so much?” said Honora.

Her husband laughed.

“Is it possible that you have seen him and still ask that?” said he.  “He is Grenoble.  Once the Chilterns were.  He is the head of the honoured firm of Israel Simpson and Sons, the president of the Grenoble National Bank, the senior warden of the church, a director in the railway.  Twice a year, in the columns of the New York newspapers dedicated to the prominent arrivals at the hotels, you may read the name of Israel Simpson of Grenoble.  Three times has he been abroad, respectably accompanied by Maria, who invariably returns to read a paper on the cathedrals and art before the Woman’s Club.”

Maria is his wife, I suppose.”

“Yes.  Didn’t you run across Maria?  She’s quite as pronounced, in her way, as Israel.  A very tower of virtue.”

“I didn’t meet anybody, Hugh,” said Honora.  “I’ll—­I’ll look for her next Sunday.  I hurried out.  It was a little embarrassing the first time,” she added, “your family being so prominent in Grenoble.”

Upon this framework, the prominence of his family, she built up during the coning week a new structure of hope.  It was strange she had never thought before of this quite obvious explanation for the curiosity of Grenoble.  Perhaps—­perhaps it was not prejudice, after all—­or not all of it.  The wife of the Chiltern heir would naturally inspire a considerable interest in any event, and Mrs. Hugh Chiltern in particular.  And these people would shortly understand, if they did not now understand, that Hugh had come back voluntarily and from a sense of duty to assume the burdens and responsibilities that so many of his generation and class had shirked.  This would tell in their favour, surely.  At this point in her meditations she consulted the mirror, to behold a modest, slim-waisted young woman becomingly arrayed in white linen, whose cheeks were aglow with health, whose eyes seemingly reflected the fire of a distant high vision.  Not a Poppaea, certainly, nor a Delila.  No, it was unbelievable that this, the very field itself of their future labours, should be denied them.  Her heart, at the mere conjecture, turned to stone.