“No, thank you.  I feel as if I couldn’t swallow anything.”  And she looked up at him very quickly; with the embryo of a smile, and then looked down again very quickly, because she could not bring the smile to maturity.

George thought: 

“Am I going to have a scene with her—­on the steamer?” It would not matter much if a scene did occur.  There was nobody else on deck forward of the bridge.  They were alone—­they were more solitary than they might have been in the studio, or in any room at No. 8.  The steamer was now nearly heading the wind, but she travelled more smoothly, for she had the last of the flood-tide under her.

George said kindly and persuasively: 

“Upon my soul, I don’t know what the old gentleman’s got against me.”

She eagerly accepted his advance, which seemed to give her courage.

“But there’s nothing to know, dear.  We both know that.  There’s nothing at all.  And yet of course I can understand it.  So can you.  In fact it was you who first explained it to me.  If you’d left No. 8 when I did and he’d heard of our engagement afterwards, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it.  But it was you staying on in the house that did it, and him not knowing of the engagement.  He thought you used to come to see me at nights at the studio, me and Agg, and make fun of everything at No. 8—­especially of his wife.  He’s evidently got some such idea in his head, and there’s no getting it out again.”

“But it’s childish.”

“I know.  However, we’ve said all this before, haven’t we?”

“But the idea’s got to be got out of his head again!” said George vigorously—­more dictatorially and less persuasively than before.

Marguerite offered no remark.

“And after all,” George continued, “he couldn’t have been so desperately keen on—­your stepmother.  When he married her your mother hadn’t been dead so very long, had she?”

“No.  But he never cared for mother anything like so much as he cared for Mrs. Lobley—­at least not as far back as I can remember.  It was a different sort of thing altogether.  I think he was perfectly mad about Mrs. Lobley.  Oh!  He stood mother’s death much—­much better than hers!  You’ve no idea—­”

“Oh yes, I have.  We know all about that sort of thing,” said George the man of the world impatiently.

Marguerite said tenderly: 

“It’s broken him.”

“Nonsense!”

“It has, George.”  Her voice was very soft.

But George would not listen to the softness of her voice.

“Well,” he objected firmly and strongly, “supposing it has!  What then?  We’re sorry for him.  What then?  That affair has nothing to do with our affair.  Is all that reason why I shouldn’t see you in your own home?  Or are we to depend on Agg—­when she happens to be at her studio?  Or are we always to see each other in the street, or in museums and things—­or steamers—­just as if you were a shop-girl?  We may just as well look facts in the face, you know.”