the beloved woman, drifting her away from him.  In communicating Fenellan’s news through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. Burman’s intentions, he was aware that there was an obstacle to his being huggingly genial, even candidly genial with her, until he could deal out further news, corroborative and consecutive, to show the action of things as progressive.  Fenellan had sunk into his usual apathy:—­and might plead the impossibility of his moving faster than the woman professing to transform herself into, beneficence out of malignity;—­one could hear him saying the words!  Victor had not seen him since last Concert evening, and he deemed it as well to hear the words Fenellan’s mouth had to say.  He called at an early hour of the Westward tidal flow at the Insurance Office looking over the stormy square of the first of Seamen.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN

After cursory remarks about the business of the Office and his friend’s contributions to periodical literature, in which he was interested for as long as he had assurance that the safe income depending upon official duties was not endangered by them, Victor kicked his heels to and fro.  Fenellan waited for him to lead.

‘Have you seen that man, her lawyer, again?’

‘I have dined with Mr. Carling:—­capital claret.’

Emptiness was in the reply.

Victor curbed himself and said:  ’By the way, you’re not likely to have dealings with Blathenoy.  The fellow has a screw to the back of a shifty eye; I see it at work to fix the look for business.  I shall sit on the Board of my Bank.  One hears things.  He lives in style at Wrensham.  By the way, Fredi has little Mab Mountney from Creckholt staying with her.  You said of little Mabsy—­“Here she comes into the room all pink and white, like a daisy.”  She’s the daisy still; reminds us of our girl at that age.—­So, then, we come to another dead block!’

‘Well, no; it’s a chemist’s shop, if that helps us on,’ said Fenellan, settling to a new posture in his chair.  ’She’s there of an afternoon for hours.’

‘You mean it’s she?’

’The lady.  I ’ll tell you.  I have it from Carling, worthy man; and lawyers can be brought to untruss a point over a cup of claret.  He’s a bit of a “Mackenzie Man,” as old aunts of mine used to say at home—­a Man of Feeling.  Thinks he knows the world, from having sifted and sorted a lot of our dustbins; as the modern Realists imagine it’s an exposition of positive human nature when they’ve pulled down our noses to the worst parts—­if there’s a worse where all are useful:  but the Realism of the dogs is to have us by the nose:—­excite it and befoul it, and you’re fearfully credible!  You don’t read that olfactory literature.  However, friend Carling is a conciliatory carle.  Three or four days of the week the lady, he says, drives to her chemist’s, and there she sits in