Hubert sat there, bareheaded, lost in thought.  Her light footfall did not touch his ear.  He looked up to find her standing before him, and he saw that she had been shedding tears.  For an instant she was powerless to direct herself; then sheer panic possessed her and she turned to escape.

Hubert started to his feet.

‘Mrs. Mutimer!  Adela!’

The first name would not have stayed her, for her flight was as unreasoning as that of a fawn.  The second, her own name, uttered with almost desperate appeal, robbed her of the power of movement.  She turned to bay, as though an obstacle had risen in her path, and there was terror in her white face.

Hubert drew a little nearer and spoke hurriedly.

’Forgive me!  I could not let you go.  You seem to have come in answer to my thought; I was wishing to see you.  Do forgive me!’

She knew that he was examining her moist eyes; a rush of blood passed over her features

‘Not unless you are willing,’ Hubert pursued, his voice at its gentlest and most courteous.  ’But if I might speak to you for a few minutes—?’

‘You have heard from Mr. Yottle?’ Adela asked, without raising her eyes, trying her utmost to speak in a merely natural way.

’Yes.  I happened to be at my mother’s house.  He came last night to obtain my address.’

The truth was, that a generous impulse, partly of his nature, and in part such as any man might know in a moment of unanticipated good fortune, had bade him put aside his prejudices and meet Mutimer at once on a footing of mutual respect.  Incapable of ignoble exultation, it seemed to him that true delicacy dictated a personal interview with the man who, judging from Yottle’s report, had so cheerfully acquitted himself of the hard task imposed by honour.  But as he walked over from Agworth this zeal cooled.  Could he trust Mutimer to appreciate his motive?  Such a man was capable of acting honourably, but the power of understanding delicacies of behaviour was not so likely to be his.  Hubert’s prejudices were insuperable; to his mind class differences necessarily argued a difference in the grain.  And it was not only this consideration that grew weightier as he walked.  In the great joy of recovering his ancestral home, in the sight of his mother’s profound happiness, he all but forgot the thoughts that had besieged him since his meetings with Adela in London.  As he drew near to Wanley his imagination busied itself almost exclusively with her; distrust and jealousy of Mutimer became fear for Adela’s future.  Such a change as this would certainly have a dire effect upon her life.  He thought of her frail appearance; he remembered the glimpse of her face that he had caught when her husband entered Mrs. Westlake’s drawing-room, the startled movement she could not suppress.  It was impossible to meet Mutimer with any show of good-feeling; he wondered how he could have set forth with such an object.