“Sir,” said Mrs. Pearce in her slow sad voice, after a glance at his face in search of sarcasm, “’tisn’t milk.  ’Tis a junket that hasn’t junked.”

“Indeed?” said Fritzing, bland because ignorant.

Mrs. Pearce fidgeted a little, wrestling perhaps with her conscience, before she added defiantly, “It wouldn’t.”

“Indeed?” said Fritzing once more; and he looked at the junket through his spectacles with that air of extreme and intelligent interest with which persons who wish to please look at other people’s babies.

He was desirous of being on good terms with Symford, and had been very pleasant all the morning to Mrs. Pearce.  That mood in which, shaken himself to his foundations by anxiety, he had shaken his fist to Annalise, was gone as completely as yesterday’s wet mist.  The golden sunshine of October lay beautifully among the gentle hills and seemed to lie as well in Fritzing’s heart.  He had gone through so much for so many weeks that merely to be free from worries for the moment filled him with thankfulness.  So may he feel who has lived through days of bodily torture in that first hour when his pain has gone:  beaten, crushed, and cowed by suffering, he melts with gratitude because he is being left alone, he gasps with a relief so utter that it is almost abject praise of the Cruelty that has for a little loosened its hold.  In this abjectly thankful mood was Fritzing when he found his worst agonies were done.  What was to come after he really for the moment did not care.  It was sufficient to exist untormented and to let his soul stretch itself in the privacy and peace of Baker’s.  He and his Princess had made a great and noble effort towards the realization of dreams that he felt were lofty, and the gods so far had been with them.  All that first morning in Symford he had an oddly restful, unburdened feeling, as of having been born again and born aged twenty-five; and those persons who used to be twenty-five themselves will perhaps agree that this must have been rather nice.  He did not stir from the parlour lest the Princess should come down and want him, and he spent the waiting hours getting information from Mrs. Pearce and informing her mind in his turn with just that amount of knowledge about himself and his niece that he wished Symford to possess.  With impressive earnestness he told her his name was Neumann, repeating it three times, almost as if in defiance of contradiction; that his niece was his deceased brother’s child; that her Christian name—­here he was swept away by inspiration—­was Maria-Theresa; that he had saved enough as a teacher of German in London to retire into the country; and that he was looking for a cottage in which to spend his few remaining years.

It all sounded very innocent.  Mrs. Pearce listened with her head on one side and with something of the air of a sparrow who doesn’t feel well.  She complimented him sadly on the fluency of his English, and told him with a sigh that in no cottage would he ever again find the comforts with which Baker’s was now surrounding him.