Then arrived a small glossy envelope, containing a tiny sheet of very thick note-paper, whereon it was written that Lady Whitelaw regretted her tardiness in replying to him (caused by her absence from home), and hoped he would be able to call upon her, at ten o’clock next morning, at the house of her sisters, the Misses Lumb, where she was stopping for a day—­she remained his sincerely.

Having duly contorted this note into all manner of painful meanings, Godwin occupied an hour in making himself presentable (scornful that he should deem such trouble necessary), and with furiously beating heart set out to walk through Twybridge.  Arrived at the house, he was led by a servant into the front room on the ground floor, where Lady Whitelaw, alone, sat reading a newspaper.  Her features were of a very common order, and nothing distinguished her from middle-aged women of average refinement; she had chubby hands, rather broad shoulders, and no visible waist.  The scrutiny she bestowed upon her visitor was close.  To Godwin’s feelings it too much resembled that with which she would have received an applicant for the post of footman.  Yet her smile was friendly enough, and no lack of civility appeared in the repetition of her excuses for having replied so late.

‘Let us talk about this,’ she began, when Godwin was uneasily seated. (She spoke with an excess of precision, as though it had at one time been needful for her to premeditate polished phrases.) ’I am very sorry you should have to think of quitting the College; very sorry indeed.  You are one of the students who do honour to the institution.’

This was pleasant, and Godwin felt a regret of the constraint that was upon him.  In his endeavour not to display a purring smile, he looked grim, as if the compliment were beneath his notice.

‘Pray don’t think,’ she pursued, ’that I wish you to speak more fully about the private circumstances you refer to in your letter.  But do let me ask you:  Is your decision final?  Are you sure that when the vacations are over you will see things just as you do now?’

‘I am quite sure of it,’ he replied.

The emphasis was merely natural to him.  He could not so govern his voice as to convey the respectful regret which at this moment he felt.  A younger lady, one who had heightened the charm of her compliment with subtle harmony of tones and strongly feminine gaze, would perhaps have elicited from him a free confession.  Gratitude and admiration would have made him capable of such frankness.  But in the face of this newspaper-reading woman (yes, he had unaccountably felt it jar upon him that a lady should be reading a newspaper), under her matronly smile, he could do no more than plump out his ‘quite sure’.  To Lady Whitelaw it sounded altogether too curt; she was conscious of her position as patroness, and had in fact thought it likely that the young man would be disposed to gratify her curiosity in some measure.