The three girls disappeared and returned in street attire.  Rose was going to the science classes at the Wedgwood Institution, Ethel and Millicent to the rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic Society.  Again, in this distribution of the complex family energy, there reappeared the suggestion of a mysterious domestic charm.

‘Don’t be late to-night,’ said Stanway severely to Millicent.

‘Now, grumbler,’ retorted the intrepid child, putting her gloved hand suddenly over her father’s mouth; Stanway submitted.  The picture of the two in this delicious momentary contact remained long in Twemlow’s mind; and he thought that Stanway could not be such a brute after all.

‘Play something for us, Nora,’ said the august paterfamilias, spreading at ease in his chair in the drawing-room, when the girls were gone.  Leonora removed her bangles and began to play ‘The Bees’ Wedding.’  But she had not proceeded far before Milly ran in again.

‘A note from Mr. Dain, pa.’

Milly had vanished in an instant, and Leonora continued to play as if nothing had happened, but Arthur was conscious of a change in the atmosphere as Stanway opened the letter and read it.

‘I must just go over the way and speak to a neighbour,’ said Stanway carelessly when Leonora had struck the final chord.  ’You’ll excuse me, I know.  Sha’n’t be long.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Arthur replied with politeness, and then, after Stanway had gone, leaving the door open, he turned to Leonora at the piano, and said:  ‘Do play something else.’

Instead of answering, she rose, resumed her jewellery, and took the chair which Stanway had left.  She smiled invitingly, evasively, inscrutably at her guest.

‘Tell me about American women,’ she said:  ‘I’ve always wanted to know.’

He thought her attitude in the great chair the most enchanting thing he had ever seen.

* * * * *

Leonora had watched Twemlow’s demeanour from the moment when she met him in her husband’s office.  She had guessed, but not certainly, that it was still inimical at least to John, and the exact words of Uncle Meshach’s warning had recurred to her time after time as she met his reluctant, cautious eyes.  Nevertheless, it was by the sudden uprush of an instinct, rather than by a calculated design, that she, in her home and surrounded by her daughters, began the process of enmeshing him in the web of influences which she spun ceaselessly from the bright threads of her own individuality.  Her mind had food for sombre preoccupation—­the lost battle with Milly during the day about Milly’s comic-opera housekeeping; the tale told by John’s nervous, effusive, guilty manner; and especially the episode of the letter from Dain and John’s disappearance:  these things were grave enough to the mother and wife.  But they receded like negligible trifles into the distance as she rose so suddenly and with such a radiant impulse from the piano.  In the new enterprise of consciously arousing the sympathy of a man, she had almost forgotten even the desperate motive which had decided her to undertake it should she get the chance.