There was one more dangerous than the rest.  Her he saw before the others came and after they had gone.  She was a tall, incredibly slight woman, with eyelashes that needed help, and a most disdainful mouth and nose, and she seemed to look scornfully at Tommy and then stand waiting.  He was in two minds about what she was waiting for, and often he had a fierce desire to go to London to find out.  But he never went.  He played the lover to Grizel as before—­not to intoxicate himself, but always to make life sunnier to her; if she stayed longer with Elspeth than the promised time, he became anxious and went in search of her.  “I have not been away an hour!” she said, laughing at him, holding little Jean up to laugh at him.  “But I cannot do without you for an hour,” he answered ardently.  He still laid down his pen to gaze with rapture at her and cry, “My wife!”

She wanted him to go to London for a change, and without her, and his heart leaped into his mouth to prevent his saying No; yet he said it, though in the Tommy way.

“Without you!” he exclaimed.  “Oh, Grizel, do you think I could find happiness apart from you for a day?  And could you let me go?” And he looked with agonized reproach at her, and sat down, clutching his head.

“It would be very hard to me,” she said softly; “but if the change did you good——­”

“A change from you!  Oh, Grizel, Grizel!”

“Or I could go with you?”

“When you don’t want to go!” he cried huskily.  “You think I could ask it of you!”

He quite broke down, and she had to comfort him.  She was smiling divinely at him all the time, as if sympathy had brought her to love even the Tommy way of saying things.  “I thought it would be sweet to you to see how great my faith in you is now,” she said.

This was the true reason why generous Grizel had proposed to him to go.  She knew he was more afraid than she of Sentimental Tommy, and she thought her faith would be a helping hand to him, as it was.

He had no regard for Lady Pippinworth.  Of all the women he had dallied with, she was the one he liked the least, for he never liked where he could not esteem.  Perhaps she had some good in her, but the good in her had never appealed to him, and he knew it, and refused to harbour her in his thoughts now; he cast her out determinedly when she seemed to enter them unbidden.  But still he was vain.  She came disdainfully and stood waiting.  We have seen him wondering what she waited for; but though he could not be sure, and so was drawn to her, he took it as acknowledgment of his prowess and so was helped to run away.

To walk away would be the more exact term, for his favourite method of exorcising this lady was to rise from his chair and take a long walk with Grizel.  Occasionally if she was occupied (and a number of duties our busy Grizel found to hand!) he walked alone, and he would not let himself brood.  Someone had once walked from Thrums to the top of the Law and back in three hours, and Tommy made several gamesome attempts to beat the record, setting out to escape that willowy woman, soon walking her down and returning in a glow of animal spirits.  It was on one of these occasions, when there was nothing in his head but ambition to do the fifth mile within the eleven minutes, that he suddenly met her Ladyship face to face.