The summons filled Alice with delight.  Wanley, whence had come the marvellous fortune, was in her imagination a land flowing with milk and honey.  Moreover, this would be her first experience of travel; as yet she had never been farther out of London than to Epping Forest.  The injunction to bring her best dress excited visions of polite company.  All through Monday she practised ways of walking, of eating, of speaking.

‘What can he want you for?’ asked Mrs. Mutimer gloomily.  ’I sh’d ’a thought he might ’a taken you with him after Christmas.  It looks as if he wasn’t coming.’

The old woman had been habitually gloomy of late.  The reply she had received to her letter was not at all what she wanted; it increased her impatience; she had read it endless times, trying to get at the very meaning of it.  Christmas must bring an end to this wretched state of things; at Christmas Dick would come to London and marry Emma; no doubt he had that time in view.  Fears which she would not consciously admit were hovering about her night and day.  She had begun to talk to herself aloud, a consequence of over-stress on a brain never used to anxious thought; she went about the upper rooms of the house muttering ‘Dick’s an honest man.’  To keep moving seemed a necessity to her; the chair in the dim corner of the dining-room she now scarcely ever occupied, and the wonted employment of her fingers was in abeyance.  She spent most of her day in the kitchen; already two servants had left because they could not endure her fidgety supervision.  She was growing suspicious of every one; Alice had to listen ten times a day to complaints of dishonesty in the domestics or the tradespeople; the old woman kept as keen a watch over petty expenditure as if poverty had still to be guarded against.  And she was constantly visiting the Vines; she would rise at small hours to get her house-work done, so as to be able to spend the afternoon in Wilton Square.  That, in truth, was still her home; the new house could never be to her what the old was; she was a stranger amid the new furniture, and sighed with relief as soon as her eyes rested on the familiar chairs and tables which had been her household gods through a lifetime.

’Arry had given comparatively little trouble of late; beyond an occasional return home an hour or so after midnight, his proceedings seemed to be perfectly regular.  He saw a good deal of Mr. Keene, who, as Alice gathered from various remarks in Richard’s letters, exercised over him a sort of tutorage.  It was singular how completely Richard seemed to have changed in his judgment of Mr. Keene.  ‘His connection with newspapers makes him very useful,’ said one letter.  ’Be as friendly with him as you like; I trust to your good sense and understanding of your own interest to draw the line.’  When at the house Mr. Keene was profoundly respectful; his position at such times was singular, for as often as not Alice had to entertain him alone.  Profound,