After asking for the stamps he asked, quite as a second thought, for a postal-order for ten shillings.  What did he want with so many stamps when he wrote so few letters?  How could he enclose a postal-order in a telegram?  She expected him, the next thing, to go into the corner and make up one of his telegrams—­half a dozen of them—­on purpose to prolong his presence.  She had so completely stopped looking at him that she could only guess his movements—­guess even where his eyes rested.  Finally she saw him make a dash that might have been toward the nook where the forms were hung; and at this she suddenly felt that she couldn’t keep it up.  The counter-clerk had just taken a telegram from a slavey, and, to give herself something to cover her, she snatched it out of his hand.  The gesture was so violent that he gave her in return an odd look, and she also perceived that Mr. Buckton noticed it.  The latter personage, with a quick stare at her, appeared for an instant to wonder whether his snatching it in his turn mightn’t be the thing she would least like, and she anticipated this practical criticism by the frankest glare she had ever given him.  It sufficed:  this time it paralysed him; and she sought with her trophy the refuge of the sounder.

CHAPTER XXI

It was repeated the next day; it went on for three days; and at the end of that time she knew what to think.  When, at the beginning, she had emerged from her temporary shelter Captain Everard had quitted the shop; and he had not come again that evening, as it had struck her he possibly might—­might all the more easily that there were numberless persons who came, morning and afternoon, numberless times, so that he wouldn’t necessarily have attracted attention.  The second day it was different and yet on the whole worse.  His access to her had become possible—­she felt herself even reaping the fruit of her yesterday’s glare at Mr. Buckton; but transacting his business with him didn’t simplify—­it could, in spite of the rigour of circumstance, feed so her new conviction.  The rigour was tremendous, and his telegrams—­not now mere pretexts for getting at her—­were apparently genuine; yet the conviction had taken but a night to develop.  It could be simply enough expressed; she had had the glimmer of it the day before in her idea that he needed no more help than she had already given; that it was help he himself was prepared to render.  He had come up to town but for three or four days; he had been absolutely obliged to be absent after the other time; yet he would, now that he was face to face with her, stay on as much longer as she liked.  Little by little it was thus clarified, though from the first flash of his re-appearance she had read into it the real essence.