to speak, and tell him that she cared less than nothing for the loss that had befallen her.  Yet she could not trust herself to speak such words.  Her heart was beating insufferably; all the woman in her rushed towards hysteria and sell-abandonment.  It was well that Hubert’s love was of quality to stand the test of these terrible moments.  Something he must say, and the most insignificant phrase was the best.

‘Will you sit—­rest after your walk?’

She did so; scarcely could she have stood longer.  And with the physical ease there seemed to come a sudden mental relief.  A thought sprang up, opening upon her like a haven of refuge.

‘There is one thing I should like to ask of you,’ she began, forcing herself to regard him directly.  ’It is a great thing, I am afraid; it may be impossible.’

‘Will you tell me what it is?’ he said, quietly filling the pause that followed.

‘I am thinking of New Wanley.’

She saw a change in his face, slight, but still a change.  She spoke more quickly.

’Will you let the works. remain as they are, on the same plan?  Will you allow the workpeople to live under the same rules?  I have been among them constantly, and I am sure that nothing but good results have come of—­of what my husband has done.  There is no need to ask you to deal kindly with them, I know that.  But if you could maintain the purpose—?  It will be such a grief to my husband if all his work comes to nothing.  There cannot be anything against your principles in what I ask.  It is so simply for the good of men and women whose lives are so hard.  Let New Wanley remain as an example.  Can you do this?’

Hubert, as he listened, joined his hands behind his back, and turned his eyes to the upper branches of the silver birch, which once in his thoughts he had likened to Adela.  What he heard from her surprised him, and upon surprise followed mortification.  He knew that she had in appearance adopted Mutimer’s principles, but his talk with her in London at Mrs. Boscobel’s had convinced him that her heart was in far other things than economic problems and schemes of revolution.  She had listened so eagerly to his conversation on art and kindred topics; it was so evident that she was enjoying a temporary release from a mode of life which chilled all her warmer instincts.  Yet she now made it her entreaty that he would continue Mutimer’s work.  Beginning timidly, she grew to an earnestness which it was impossible to think feigned.  He was unprepared for anything of the kind; his emotions resented it.  Though consciously harbouring no single unworthy desire, he could not endure to find Adela zealous on her husband’s behalf.

Had he misled himself?  Was the grief that he had witnessed really that of a wife for her husband’s misfortune?  For whatever reason she had married Mutimer—­and that could not be love—­married life might have engendered affection.  He knew Adela to be deeply conscientious; how far was it in a woman’s power to subdue herself to love at the bidding of duty?