“I didn’t know you were with us,” he said, with his pensive smile, “till I found your letters here, addressed to Mrs. Lander’s care; and then I put two and two together.  It only shows how small the world is, don’t you think so?  I’ve just got back from my vacation; I prefer to take it in the fall of the year, because it’s so much pleasanter to travel, then.  I suppose you didn’t know I was here?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Clementina.  “I never dreamed of such a thing.”

“To be sure; why should you?” Fane reflected.  “I’ve been here ever since last spring.  But I’ll say this, Miss Claxon, that if it’s the least unpleasant to you, or the least disagreeable, or awakens any kind of associations”—­

“Oh, no!” Clementina protested, and Fane was spared the pain of saying what he would do if it were.

He bowed, and she said sweetly, “It’s pleasant to meet any one I’ve seen before.  I suppose you don’t know how much it’s changed at Middlemount since you we’ e thea.”  Fane answered blankly, while he felt in his breast pocket, Oh, he presumed so; and she added:  “Ha’dly any of the same guests came back this summer, and they had more in July than they had in August, Mrs. Atwell said.  Mr. Mahtin, the chef, is gone, and newly all the help is different.”

Fane kept feeling in one pocket and then slapped himself over the other pockets.  “No,” he said, “I haven’t got it with me.  I must have left it in my room.  I just received a letter from Frank—­Mr. Gregory, you know, I always call him Frank—­and I thought I had it with me.  He was asking about Middlemount; and I wanted to read you what he said.  But I’ll find it upstairs.  He’s out of college, now, and he’s begun his studies in the divinity school.  He’s at Andover.  I don’t know what to make of Frank, oftentimes,” the clerk continued, confidentially.  “I tell him he’s a kind of a survival, in religion; he’s so aesthetic.”  It seemed to Fane that he had not meant aesthetic, exactly, but he could not ask Clementina what the word was.  He went on to say, “He’s a grand good fellow, Frank is, but he don’t make enough allowance for human nature.  He’s more like one of those old fashioned orthodox.  I go in for having a good time, so long as you don’t do anybody else any hurt.”

He left her, and went to receive the commands of a lady who was leaning over the desk, and saying severely, “My mail, if you please,” and Clementina could not wait for him to come back; she had to go to Mrs. Lander, and get her ready for breakfast; Ellida had taught Mrs. Lander a luxury of helplessness in which she persisted after the maid’s help was withdrawn.