“My own brother!  I expect no confidences, but a whisper warns me that you have not been to Stornley twice without experiencing the truth of our old discovery, that the Poles are magnetic?  Why should we conceal it from ourselves, if it be so?  I think it a folly, and fraught with danger, for people not to know their characteristics.  If they attract, they should keep in a circle where they will have no reason to revolt at, or say, repent of what they attract.  My argumentative sister does not coincide.  If she did, she would lose her argument.

“Adieu!  Such is my dulness, I doubt whether I have made my meaning clear.

“Your thrice affectionate

“Adela.

“P.S.—­Lady Gosstre has just taken Emilia to Richford for a week.  Papa starts for Bidport to-morrow.”

This short and rather blunt exercise in Fine Shades was read impatiently by Wilfrid.  “Why doesn’t she write plain to the sense?” he asked, with the usual injustice of men, who demand a statement of facts, forgetting how few there are to feed the post; and that indication and suggestion are the only language for the multitude of facts unborn and possible.  Twilight best shows to the eye what may be.

“I suppose I must go down there,” he said to himself, keeping a meditative watch on the postscript, as if it possessed the capability of slipping away and deceiving him.  “Does she mean that Cornelia sees too much of this man Barrett? or, what does she mean?” And now he saw meanings in the simple passages, and none at all in the intricate ones; and the double-meanings were monsters that ate one another up till nothing remained of them.  In the end, however, he made a wrathful guess and came to a resolution, which brought him to the door of the house next day at noon.  He took some pains in noting the exact spot where he had last seen Emilia half in moonlight, and then dismissed her image peremptorily.  The house was apparently empty.  Gainsford, the footman, gave information that he thought the ladies were upstairs, but did not volunteer to send a maid to them.  He stood in deferential footman’s attitude, with the aspect of a dog who would laugh if he could, but being a footman out of his natural element, cannot.

“Here’s a specimen of the new plan of treating servants!” thought Wilfrid, turning away.  “To act a farce for their benefit!  That fellow will explode when he gets downstairs.  I see how it is.  This woman, Chump, is making them behave like schoolgirls.”

He conceived the idea sharply, and forthwith, without any preparation, he was ready to treat these high-aspiring ladies like schoolgirls.  Nor was there a lack of justification; for when they came down to his shouts in the passage, they hushed, and held a finger aloft, and looked altogether so unlike what they aimed at being, that Wilfrid’s sense of mastery became almost contempt.

“I know perfectly what you have to tell me,” he said.  “Mrs. Chump is here, you have quarrelled with her, and she has shut her door, and you have shut yours.  It’s quite intelligible and full of dignity.  I really can’t smother my voice in consequence.”