It was his custom to call upon her daily, to use her house as his own.  When they were separated, they wrote to each other every day; the relations between them were of the most intimate and affectionate kind.  He advised in all her affairs, while she directed his; it was understood that he was her heir, and though she was not more than five and forty or so, and had, apparently, a long life still before her, so that the succession was distant, the prospect gave him importance.  She had been out of town, and perhaps the fact of a new acquaintance with so obscure a person as a simple tutor by correspondence, seemed to Arnold not worth mentioning.  At all events, he had not mentioned it in his daily letters.

And now she was coming home; she was actually arrived; he would see her that evening.  Her last letter was lying before him.

“I parted from dear Stella yesterday.  She goes to stay with the Essex Mainwarings for a month; after that, I hope that she will give me a long visit.  I do not know where one could find a sweeter girl, or one more eminently calculated to make a man happy.  Beautiful, strictly speaking, she is not, perhaps, but of excellent connections, not without a portion, young, clever, and ambitious.  With such a wife, my dear Arnold, a man may aspire to anything.”

“To anything!” repeated Arnold; “what is her notion of anything?  She has arrived by this time.”  He looked at his watch and found it was past five.  “I ought to have been at the station to meet her.  I must go round and see her, and I must dine with her to-night.”  He sighed heavily.  “It would be much pleasanter to spend the evening with Iris.”

Then a carriage stopped at his door.  It was his cousin, and the next minute he was receiving and giving the kiss of welcome.  For his own part, he felt guilty, because he could put so little heart into that kiss, compared with all previous embraces.  She was a stout, hearty little woman, who could never have been in the least beautiful, even when she was young.  Now on the middle line, between forty and fifty, she looked as if her face had been chopped out of the marble by a rude but determined artist, one who knew what he wanted and would tolerate no conventional work.  So that her face, at all events, was, if not unique, at least unlike any other face one had ever seen.  Most faces, we know, can be reduced to certain general types—­even Iris’s face might be classified—­while of yours, my brother, there are, no doubt, multitudes.  Miss Holland, however, had good eyes—­bright, clear gray—­the eyes of a woman who knows what she wants and means to get it if she can.

“Well, my dear,” she said, taking the one comfortable chair in the studio, “I am back again, and I have enjoyed my journey very much; we will have all the travels this evening.  You are looking splendid, Arnold!”

“I am very well indeed.  And you, Clara?  But I need not ask.”