Presently Barfoot and he were introduced.  They had nothing to say to each other, but Everard maintained a brief conversation just to observe the man.  Turning at length, he began to talk with Mrs. Widdowson, and, because he was conscious of the jealous eye, assumed an especial sprightliness, an air of familiar pleasantry, to which the lady responded, but with a nervous hesitation.

The arrival of these people was an intense annoyance to him.  Another quarter of an hour and things would have come to an exciting pass between Rhoda and himself; he would have heard how she received a declaration of love.  Rhoda’s self-possession notwithstanding, he believed that he was not without power over her.  She liked to talk with him, enjoyed the freedom he allowed himself in choice of subject.  Perhaps no man before had ever shown an appreciation of her qualities as woman.  But she would not yield, was in no real danger from his love-making.  Nay, the danger was to his own peace.  He felt that resistance would intensify the ardour of his wooing, and possibly end by making him a victim of genuine passion.  Well, let her enjoy that triumph, if she were capable of winning it.

He had made up his mind to outstay the Widdowsons, who clearly would not make a long call.  But the fates were against him.  Another visitor arrived, a lady named Cosgrove, who settled herself as if for at least an hour.  Worse than that, he heard her say to Rhoda,—­

‘Oh, then do come and dine with us.  Do, I beg!’

‘I will, with pleasure,’ was Miss Nunn’s reply.  ’Can you wait and take me with you?’

Useless to stay longer.  As soon as the Widdowsons had departed he went up to Rhoda and silently offered his hand.  She scarcely looked at him, and did not in the least return his pressure.

Rhoda dined at Mrs. Cosgrove’s, and was home again at eleven o’clock.  When the house was locked up, and the servants had gone to bed, she sat in the library, turning over a book that she had brought from her friend’s house.  It was a volume of essays, one of which dealt with the relations between the sexes in a very modern spirit, treating the subject as a perfectly open one, and arriving at unorthodox conclusions.  Mrs. Cosgrove had spoken of this dissertation with lively interest.  Rhoda perused it very carefully, pausing now and then to reflect.

In this reading of her mind, Barfoot came near the truth.

No man had ever made love to her; no man, to her knowledge, had ever been tempted to do so.  In certain moods she derived satisfaction from this thought, using it to strengthen her life’s purpose; having passed her thirtieth year, she might take it as a settled thing that she would never be sought in marriage, and so could shut the doors on every instinct tending to trouble her intellectual decisions.  But these instincts sometimes refused to be thus treated.  As Miss Barfoot told her, she was very young for her