She came in quickly, and shut the door behind her, and then dropping on her knees beside him, she laid her head against his heart.  He put out his hand, touched her face, and said: 

“Take off this veil.”

The taking off of Adelaide’s veil was not a process to be accomplished ill-advisedly or lightly.  Lucie, her maid, had put it on, with much gathering together and looking into the glass over her mistress’s shoulder, and it was held in place with shining pins and hair-pins.  She lifted her head, sank back upon her heels, and raised her arms to the offending cobweb of black meshes, while her husband went on in a tone not absolutely denuded of reproach: 

“You’ve been in some time.”

“Yes,”—­she stuck the first pin into the upholstery of the sofa,—­“but Pringle told me Mathilde had a visitor, and I thought it was my duty to stop and be a little parental.”

“A young man?”

“Yes.  I forget his name—­just like all these young men nowadays, alert and a little too much at his ease, but amusing in his way.  He said, among other things—­”

But Farron, it appeared, was not exclusively interested in the words of Mathilde’s visitor; for at this instant, perceiving that his wife had disengaged herself from her veil, he sat up, caught her to him, and pressed his lips to hers.

“O Adelaide!” he said, and it seemed to her he spoke with a sort of agony.

She held him away from her.

“Vincent, what is it?” she asked.

“What is what?”

“Is anything wrong?”

“Between us?”

Oh, she knew that method of his, to lead her on to make definite statements about impressions of which nothing definite could be accurately said.

“No, I won’t be pinned down,” she said; “but I feel it, the way a rheumatic feels it, when the wind goes into the east.”

He continued to look at her gravely; she thought he was going to speak when a knock came at the door.  It was Pringle announcing the visit of Mr. Lanley.

Adelaide rose slowly to her feet, and, walking to her husband’s dressing-table, repinned her hat, and caught up the little stray locks which grew in deep, sharp points at the back of her head.

“You’ll come down, too?” she said.

Farron was looking about for his coat, and as he put it on he observed dryly: 

“The young man is seeing all the family.”

“Oh, he won’t mind,” she answered.  “He probably hasn’t the slightest wish to see Mathilde alone.  They both struck me as sorry when I left them; they were running down.  You can’t imagine, Vin, how little romance there is among all these young people.”

“They leave it to us,” he answered.  This was exactly in his accustomed manner, and as they went down-stairs together her heart felt lighter, though the long, black, shiny pin stuck harmlessly into the upholstery of the sofa was like a mile-stone, for afterward she remembered that her questions had gone unanswered.