She made reply: 

‘I don’t understand.  Do you mean how is he engaged?’

‘How comes he to know Mrs. Westlake?’

’Through common friends—­some people named Boscobel.  Mr. Boscobel is an artist, and Mr. Eldon appears to be studying art.’

Her voice was quite steady through this explanation.  The surprise seemed to have enabled her to regard him unmoved, almost with curiosity.

‘I suppose he’s constantly there—­at the Westlakes’?’

’That was his first visit.  We met him a few evenings before at the Boscobels’, at dinner.  It was then he made Mrs. Westlake’s acquaintance.’

Mutimer moved his head as if to signify indifference.  But Adela had found an unexpected relief in speaking thus openly; she was tempted to go further.

’I believe he writes about pictures.  Mrs. Boscobel told me that he had been some time in Italy.’

’Well and good; I don’t care to hear about his affairs.  So you dined with these Boscobel people?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled disagreeably.

’I thought you were rather particular about telling the truth.  You told Alice you never dined out.’

‘I don’t think I said that,’ Adela replied quietly.

He paused; then: 

‘What fault have you to find with Alice, eh?’

Adela was not in the mood for evasions; she answered in much the same tone as she had used in speaking of Hubert.

’I don’t think she likes me.  If she did, I should be able to be more friendly with her.  Her world is very different from ours.’

‘Different?  You mean you don’t like Rodman?’

’I was not thinking of Mr. Rodman.  I mean that her friends are not the same as ours.’

Mutimer forgot for a moment his preoccupation in thought of Alice.

‘Was there anything wrong with the people you met there?’

She was silent.

’Just tell me what you think.  I want to know.  What did you object to?’

‘I don’t think they were the best kind of people.’

’The best kind?  I suppose they are what you call ladies and gentlemen?’

’You must have felt that they were not quite the same as the Westlakes, for instance.’

‘The Westlakes!’

He named them sneeringly, to Adela’s astonishment.  And he added as he walked towards the door: 

‘There isn’t much to be said for some of the people you meet there.’

A new complexity was introduced into her life.  Viewed by this recent light, Mutimer’s behaviour since the return from London was not so difficult to understand; but the problem of how to bear with it became the harder.  There were hours when Adela’s soul was like a bird of the woods cage-pent:  it dashed itself against the bars of fate, and in anguish conceived the most desperate attempts for freedom.  She could always die, but was it not hard to perish in her youth and with the world’s