“Really, dear lad, I don’t fancy you know how happy that makes me to hear.”

“Yes, you take just the sort of interest in my work I want, and that no one else takes.”

“Not even Angel?” said Myrtilla, slily.

“Angel, bless her, loves my work; and is a brave little critic of it; but then it isn’t disloyal to her to say that she doesn’t know as much as you.  Besides, she doesn’t approach it in quite the same way.  She cares for it, first, because it is mine, and only secondly for its own sake.  Now you care for it just for what it is—­”

“I care for it, certainly, for what it’s going to be,” said Myrtilla, making one of those honest distinctions which made her opinion so stimulating to Henry.

“Yes, there you are.  You’re artistically ambitious for me; you know what I want to do, even before I know myself.  That’s why you’re so good for me.  No one but you is that for me; and—­poor stuff as I know it is—­never write a word without wondering what you will think of it.”

“You’re sure it’s quite true,” said Myrtilla; “don’t say so if it isn’t.  Because you know you’re saying what I care most to hear, perhaps, of anything you could say.  You know how I love literature, and—­well, you know too how fond I am of you, dear lad, don’t you?”

Literary criticism had kindled into emotion; and Henry bent down, and kissed Myrtilla’s hand.  In return she let her hand rest a moment lightly on his hair, and then, rather spasmodically, turned to remark on his bookshelves with suspicious energy.

At that moment another step was heard in the corridor, again feminine.  Henry knew it for Angel’s; and it may be that his expression grew a shade embarrassed, as he said: 

“I believe I shall be able to introduce you to Angel after all—­for I think this is she coming along the passage.”

As Henry opened the door, Angel was on the point of throwing her arms round his neck, when, noticing a certain constraint in his manner of greeting, she realised that he was not alone.

“We were just talking of you, dear,” said Henry.  “This is my friend, Mrs. Williamson,—­’Myrtilla,’ of whom you’ve often heard me speak.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve often heard of Mrs. Williamson,” said Angel, not of course suffering the irony of her thought to escape into her voice.

“And I’ve heard no less of Miss Flower,” said Mrs. Williamson, “not indeed from this faithless boy here,—­for I haven’t seen him for so long that I’ve had to humble myself at last and call,—­but from Esther.”

Myrtilla loved the transparent face, pulsing with light, flushing or fading with her varying mood, answering with exquisite delicacy to any advance and retreat of the soul within.  But an invincible prejudice, or perhaps rather fear, shut Angel’s eyes from the appreciation of Myrtilla.  She was sweet and beautiful, but to the child that Angel still was she suggested malign artifice.  Angel looked at her as an imaginative child looks at the moon, with suspicion.