‘Yes,’ she was saying to the man of military appearance, ’it’s very early to come back to London, but I did get so tired of those foreign places.’

(In other words, of being far from her Christian—­thus he interpreted.)

’No, we didn’t make a single pleasant acquaintance.  A shockingly tiresome lot of people wherever we went.’

(In comparison with the faithful lover, who waited, waited.)

’Foreigners are so stupid—­don’t you think so?  Why should they always expect you to speak their language?—­Oh, of course I speak French; but it is such a disagreeable language—­don’t you think so?’

(Compared with the accents of English devotion, of course.)

‘Do you go in for cycling, Mr. Moxey?’ inquired Mrs. Palmer’s laughing niece, from a little distance.

‘For cycling?’ With a great effort he recovered himself and grasped the meaning of the words.  ’No, I—­I’m sorry to say I don’t.  Capital exercise!’

’Mr. Dwight has just been telling me such an awfully good story about a friend of his.  Do tell it again, Mr. Dwight!  It’ll make you laugh no end, Mr. Moxey.’

The young man appealed to was ready enough to repeat his anecdote, which had to do with a bold cyclist, who, after dining more than well, rode his machine down a steep hill and escaped destruction only by miracle.  Christian laughed desperately, and declared that he had never heard anything so good.

But the tension of his nerves was unendurable.  Five minutes more of anguish, and he sprang up like an automaton.

‘Must you really go, Mr. Moxey?’ said Constance, with a manner which of course was intended to veil her emotion.  ’Please don’t be another year before you let us see you again.’

Blessings on her tender heart!  What more could she have said, in the presence of all those people?  He walked all the way to Notting Hill through a pelting rain, his passion aglow.

Impossible to be silent longer concerning the brilliant future.  Arrived at home, he flung off hat and coat, and went straight to the drawing-room, hoping to find Marcella alone.  To his annoyance, a stranger was sitting there in conversation, a very simply dressed lady, who, as he entered, looked at him with a grave smile and stood up.  He thought he had never seen her before.

Marcella wore a singular expression; there was a moment of silence, for Christian decidedly embarrassing, since it seemed to be expected that he should greet the stranger.

‘Don’t you remember Janet?’ said his sister.

‘Janet?’ He felt his face flush.  ’You don’t mean to say—?  But how you have altered!  And yet, no; really, you haven’t.  It’s only my stupidity.’  He grasped her hand, and with a feeling of genuine pleasure, despite awkward reminiscences.

‘One does alter in eleven years,’ said Janet Moxey, in a very pleasant, natural voice—­a voice of habitual self-command, conveying the idea of a highly cultivated mind, and many other agreeable things.