“Such a surprise!” said the voice.  Nellie appeared, rosy.

Denry threw his new motoring cap hastily on to the hall-stand.  No!  He did not hope that Nellie would see it.  He hoped that she would not see it.  Now that the moment was really come to declare himself the owner of a motor-car, he grew timid and nervous.  He would have liked to hide his hat.  But then Denry was quite different from our common humanity.  He was capable even of feeling awkward in a new suit of clothes.  A singular person.

“Hello!” she greeted him.

“Hello!” he greeted her.

Their hands touched.

“Father hasn’t come yet,” she added.  He fancied she was not quite at ease.

“Well,” he said, “what’s this surprise.”

She motioned him into the drawing-room.

The surprise was a wonderful woman, brilliant in black—­not black silk, but a softer, delicate stuff.  She reclined in an easy-chair with surpassing grace and self-possession.  A black Egyptian shawl, spangled with silver, was slipping off her shoulders.  Her hair was dressed—­that is to say, it was dressed; it was obviously and thrillingly a work of elaborate art.  He could see her two feet and one of her ankles.  The boots, the open-work stocking—­such boots, such an open-work stocking, had never been seen in Bursley, not even at a ball!  She was in mourning, and wore scarcely any jewellery, but there was a gleaming tint of gold here and there among the black, which resulted in a marvellous effect of richness.

The least experienced would have said, and said rightly:  “This must be a woman of wealth and fashion.”  It was the detail that finished the demonstration.  The detail was incredible.  There might have been ten million stitches in the dress.  Ten sempstresses might have worked on the dress for ten years.  An examination of it under a microscope could but have deepened one’s amazement at it.

She was something new in the Five Towns, something quite new.

Denry was not equal to the situation.  He seldom was equal to a small situation.  And although he had latterly acquired a considerable amount of social savoir, he was constantly mislaying it, so that he could not put his hand on it at the moment when he most required it, as now.

“Well, Denry!” said the wondrous creature in black, softly.

And he collected himself as though for a plunge, and said: 

“Well, Ruth!”

This was the woman whom he had once loved, kissed, and engaged himself to marry.  He was relieved that she had begun with Christian names, because he could not recall her surname.  He could not even remember whether he had ever heard it.  All he knew was that, after leaving Bursley to join her father in Birmingham, she had married somebody with a double name, somebody well off, somebody older than herself; somebody apparently of high social standing; and that this somebody had died.