“He doesn’t seem very hard toward her,” I murmured, looking down into the garden where Mr. Ingle just then happened to be adjusting a scarf about his hostess’s shoulders.

“He’s led a detestable life,” said Mrs. Harman, “among detestable people!”

She spoke with sudden, remarkable vigour, and as if she knew.  The full-throated emphasis she put upon “detestable” gave the word the sting of a flagellation; it rang with a rightful indignation that brought vividly to my mind the thought of those three years in Mrs. Harman’s life which Elizabeth said “hurt one to think of.”  For this was the lady who had rejected good George Ward to run away with a man much deeper in all that was detestable than Mr. Cresson Ingle could ever be!

“He seems to me much of a type with these others,” I said.

“Oh, they keep their surfaces about the same.”

“It made me wish I had a little more surface to-night,” I laughed.  “I’d have fitted better.  Miss Ward is different at different times.  When we are alone together she always has the air of excusing, or at least explaining, these people to me, but this evening I’ve had the disquieting thought that perhaps she also explained me to them.”

“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Harman, turning to me quickly.  “Didn’t you see?  She was making up to Mr. Ingle for this morning.  It came out that she’d ridden over at daylight to see you; Anne Elliott discovered it in some way and told him.”

This presented an aspect of things so overwhelmingly novel that out of a confusion of ideas I was able to fasten on only one with which to continue the conversation, and I said irrelevantly that Miss Elliott was a remarkable young woman.  At this my companion, who had renewed her observation of the valley, gave me a full, clear look of earnest scrutiny, which set me on the alert, for I thought that now what she desired to say was coming.  But I was disappointed, for she spoke lightly, with a ripple of amusement.

“I suppose she finished her investigations?  You told her all you could?”

“Almost.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t trust me with the reservation?” she asked, smiling.

“I would trust you with anything,” I answered seriously.

“You didn’t gratify that child?” she said, half laughing.  Then, to my surprise, her tone changed suddenly, and she began again in a hurried low voice:  “You didn’t tell her—­” and stopped there, breathless and troubled, letting me see that I had been right after all:  this was what she wanted to talk about.

“I didn’t tell her that young Saffren is mad, no; if that is what you mean.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said slowly, sinking back in her chair so that her face was in the shadow of the awning which sheltered the little table between us.

“In the first place, I wouldn’t have told her even if it were true,” I returned, “and in the second, it isn’t true—­though you have some reason to think it is,” I added.