Edward as you did at Oxford.  I am afraid it must have been very disagreeable, both to you and to her.  When Edward told me of it next morning it made me cold to think of it.  I made up my mind that our friendship—­yours and ours—­with her was over.  But do you know she came to call on me that very afternoon—­how she made time I don’t know—­but she did.  Naturally, I was very uncomfortable, but she began to talk of it in the calmest way while we were having tea.  “Mr. Kendal was probably quite right,” she said, “in thinking the part unsuited to me; anyhow, I asked him for his opinion, and I should be a poor creature to mind his giving it.”  And then she laughed and said that I must ask Edward to keep his eyes open for anything that would do better for her in the autumn.  And since then she has behaved as if she had forgotten all about it.  I never knew any one with less smallness about her.’

‘No; she is a fine creature,’ said Kendal, almost mechanically.  How little Mrs. Stuart knew—­or rather, how entirely remote she was from feeling—­what had happened!  It seemed to him that the emotion of that scene was still thrilling through all his pulses, yet to what ordinary little proportions had it been reduced in Mrs. Stuart’s mind!  He alone had seen the veil lifted, had come close to the energetic reality of the girl’s nature.  That Isabel Bretherton could feel so, could look so, was known only to him—­the thought had pain in it, but the keenest pleasure also.

‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Stuart presently, with a touch of reproach in her voice, ‘that she asked for you on the last night?’

‘Did she?’

’Yes.  We had just gone on to the stage to see her after the curtain had fallen.  It was such a pretty sight, you ought not to have missed it.  The Prince had come to say good-bye to her, and, as we came in, she was just turning away in her long phantom dress with the white hood falling round her head, like that Romney picture—­don’t you remember?—­of Lady Hamilton,—­Mr. Forbes has drawn her in it two or three times.  The stage was full of people.  Mr. Forbes was there, of course, and Edward, and ourselves, and presently I heard her say to Edward, “Is Mr. Kendal here?  I did not see him in the house.”  Edward said something about your not having been able to get a seat, which I thought clumsy of him, for, of course, we could have got some sort of place for you at the last moment.  She didn’t say anything, but I thought—­if you won’t mind my saying so, Mr. Kendal—­that, considering all things, it would have been better if you had been there.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Kendal, with vexation in his voice, ’that there is a fate against my doing anything as I ought to do it.  I thought, on the whole, it would be better not to make a fuss about it when it came to the last.  You see she must look upon me to some extent as a critical, if not a hostile, influence, and I did not wish to remind her of my existence.’