The door opened; involuntarily the speakers moved apart; and though their faces and attitudes were strictly composed when Emily entered, she knew they had been standing closer together.

‘I’m afraid I’m interrupting you,’ she said.

‘No, Emily; pray do not go away.  We were only talking about you.’

’If I were to leave every time you begin to talk about me, I should spend my life in my room.  I daresay you have many faults to find.  Let me hear all about your fresh discoveries.’

It was a thin November day:  leaves were whirling on the lawn, and at that moment one blew rustling down the window-pane.  And, even as it, she seemed a passing thing.  Her face was like a plate of fine white porcelain, and the deep eyes filled it with a strange and magnetic pathos; the abundant chestnut hair hung in the precarious support of a thin tortoiseshell; and there was something unforgetable in the manner in which her aversion for the elder woman betrayed itself—­a mere nothing, and yet more impressive than any more obvious and therefore more vulgar expression of dislike would have been.

‘A little patience, Emily.  You will not have me here much longer.’

’I suppose that I am so disagreeable that you cannot live with me.  Why should you go away?’

‘My dear Emily, you must not excite yourself.  The doctor——­’

’I want to know why she said she was going to leave.  Has she been complaining about me to you?  What is her reason for wanting to go?’

’We do not get on together as we used to—­that is all, Emily.  I can please you no longer.’

’It is not my fault if we do not get on.  I don’t see why we shouldn’t, and I do not want you to go.’

‘Emily, dear, everything shall be as you like it.’

The girl looked at him with the shy, doubting look of an animal that would like, and still does not dare, to go to the beckoning hand.  How frail seemed the body in the black dress! and how thin the arms in the black sleeves!  Hubert took the little hand in his.  At his touch a look of content and rest passed into her eyes, and she yielded herself as the leaf yields to the wind.  She was all his when he chose.  Mrs. Bentley left the room; and, seeing her go, a light of sudden joy illuminated the thin, pale face; and when the door closed, and she was alone with him, the bleak, unhappy look, which had lately grown strangely habitual to her, faded out of her face and eyes.  He fetched her shawl, and took her hand again in his, knowing that by so doing he made her happy.  He could not refuse her the peace from pain that these attentions brought her, though he would have held himself aloof from all women but one.  She knew the truth well enough; but they who suffer much think only of the cessation of pain.  He wondered at the inveigling content that introduced itself into her voice, face, and gesture.  Settling herself comfortably on the sofa, she said—­