Like most men who surrender to their temperaments, Lawrence was as a rule well served by his intuitions.  Now and again they failed him as with Isabel, but when his mind was alert it was a sensitive medium.  He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . .  When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp?  Bernard’s fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—­it was not in Bernard’s line:  and why translate a close friendship into “meeting once or twice”?  Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—­Not misled:  the Laura Selincourt of Hyde’s recollection was not one to stoop to petty shifts.

“‘Once or twice?’” Lawrence echoed:  “Oh, much oftener than that!  Mrs. Clowes and I are old friends, at least I hoped we were.  She can’t be so ungracious as to have forgotten me?”

“She seems to have, doesn’t she?” Bernard with his inscrutable smile let the question drop.  “Just touch that bell, will you, there’s a good fellow?  So sorry to make you dance attendance—­ Hallo, here she is!”

Laura had been waiting in the parlour, under orders not to enter till the bell rang.  She had heard all, and wondered whether it was innocence or subtlety that had walked in and out of Bernard’s trap.  She remembered Hyde was much like other fourth-year University men except that he was not egotistical and not shy:  he had altered away from his class, but in what direction it was difficult to tell:  there was no deciphering the pleasant blankness of his features or the conventional smile in his black eyes.

“I haven’t seen you for fourteen years,” she said, giving him her hand.  “Oh Lawrence, how old you make me feel!”

“Shall I swear you haven’t changed?  It would be a poor compliment.”

“And one I couldn’t return.  I shouldn’t have known you, unless it were by your likeness to Bernard.”

“Am I like Bernard?” said Lawrence, startled.

“That’s a good joke, isn’t it?” said Clowes.  “But my wife is right.  If I were not paralysed, we should be a good bit alike.”

Under the casual manner, it was in that moment that Hyde saw his cousin for what he was:  a rebel in agony.  There was a tragedy at Wanhope then, Lucian Selincourt had not exaggerated.  Though Lawrence was not naturally sympathetic, he felt an unpleasant twinge of pity, much the same as when his dog was run over in the street:  a pain in the region of the heart, as well defined as rheumatism.  In Sally’s case, after convincing himself that she would never get on her legs again, he had eased it by carrying her to the nearest chemist’s:  the loving little thing had licked his hand with her last breath, but when the brightness faded out of her brown eyes, in his quality of Epicurean, Lawrence had not let himself grieve over her.  Unluckily one could not pay a chemist to put Bernard Clowes out of his pain!  “This is going to be deuced uncomfortable,” was the reflection that crossed his mind in its naked selfishness.  “I wish I had never come near the place.  I’ll get away as soon as I can.”