Her voice to-day had a vibrant quality which seemed to result from some agreeable emotion.  Hilliard remarked a gleam in her eyes and a colour in her cheeks which gave her an appearance of better health than a few days ago.

“You never go into the country?” he said, feeling unable to join in her praise of London, though it was intelligible enough to him.

“I go now and then as far as Hampstead Heath,” Eve answered with a smile.  “If it’s fine I shall be there next Sunday with Patty Ringrose.”

Hilliard grasped the opportunity.  Would she permit him to meet her and Miss Ringrose at Hampstead?  Without shadow of constraint or affectation, Eve replied that such a meeting would give her pleasure:  she mentioned place and time at which they might conveniently encounter.

He walked with her all the way to the library, and attended her back to Gower Place.  The result of this conversation was merely to intensify the conflict of feelings. which Eve had excited in him.  Her friendliness gave him no genuine satisfaction; her animated mood, in spite of the charm to which he submitted, disturbed him with mistrust.  Nothing she said sounded quite sincere, yet it was more difficult than ever to imagine that she played a part quite alien to her disposition.

No word had fallen from her which threw light upon her present circumstances, and he feared to ask any direct question.  It had surprised him to learn that she subscribed to Mudie’s.  The book she brought away with her was a newly published novel, and in the few words they exchanged on the subject while standing at the library counter she seemed to him to exhibit a surprising acquaintance with the literature of the day.  Of his own shortcomings in this respect he was but too sensible, and he began to feel himself an intellectual inferior, where every probability had prepared him for the reverse.

The next morning he went to Mudie’s on his own account, and came away with volumes chosen from those which lay on the counter.  He was tired of wandering about the town, and might as well pass his time in reading.

When Sunday came, he sought the appointed spot at Hampstead, and there, after an hour’s waiting, met the two friends.  Eve was no longer in her vivacious mood; brilliant sunshine, and the breeze upon the heath, had no power to inspirit her; spoke in monosyllables, and behaved with unaccountable reserve.  Hilliard had no choice but to converse with Patty, who was as gay and entertaining as ever.  In the course of their gossip he learnt that Miss Ringrose was employed at a music-shop, kept by her uncle, where she sold the latest songs and dances, and “tried over” on a piano any unfamiliar piece which a customer might think of purchasing.  It was not easy to understand how these two girls came to be so intimate, for they seemed to have very little in common.  Compared with Eve Madeley, Patty was an insignificant little person; but of her moral uprightness Hilliard felt only the more assured the longer he talked with her, and this still had a favourable effect upon his estimate of Eve.