“I wish you could find out what’s troubling your aunt,” he said to Irene, next day.  “Something is, and something very serious, though she won’t admit it.  I’m really uneasy about her.”

Irene tried to win the sufferer’s confidence, but without success.  Mrs. Hannaford became irritable, and withdrew as much as possible from sight.

The girl had her own trouble, and it was one she must needs keep to herself.  She shrank from the next meeting with Arnold Jacks, which could not long be postponed.  It took place three days after her return, when Arnold and Mrs. Jacks dined in Bryanston Square.  John Jacks was to have come, but excused himself on the plea of indisposition.  As might have been expected of him, Arnold was absolute discretion; he looked and spoke, perhaps, a trifle more gaily than usual, but to Irene showed no change of demeanour, and conversed with her no more than was necessary.  Irene felt grateful, and once more tried to convince herself that she had done nothing irreparable.  In fact, as in assertion, she was free.  The future depended entirely on her own will and pleasure.  That her mind was ceaselessly preoccupied with Arnold could only be deemed natural, for she had to come to a decision within three or four weeks’ time.  But—­if necessary the respite should be prolonged.

Eustace Derwent dined with them, and Irene noticed—­what had occurred to her before now—­that the young man seemed to have particular pleasure in the society of Mrs. Jacks; he conversed with her more naturally, more variously, than with any other lady of his friends; and Mrs. Jacks, through the unimpeachable correctness of her exterior, almost allowed it to be suspected that she found a special satisfaction in listening to him.  Eustace was a frequent guest at the Jacks’; yet there could hardly be much in common between him and the lady’s elderly husband, nor was he on terms of much intimacy with Arnold.  Of course two such excellent persons, such models of decorum, such examples of the English ideal, masculine and feminine, would naturally see in each other the most desirable of acquaintances; it was an instance of social and personal fitness, which the propriety of our national manners renders as harmless as it is delightful.  They talked of art, of literature, discovering an entire unanimity in their preferences, which made for the safely conventional.  They chatted of common acquaintances, agreeing that the people they liked were undoubtedly the very nicest people in their circle, and avoiding in the suavest manner any severity regarding those they could not approve.  When Eustace apologised for touching on a professional subject (he had just been called to the Bar), Mrs. Jacks declared that nothing could interest her more.  If he ventured a jest, she smiled with surpassing sweetness, and was all but moved to laugh.  They, at all events, spent a most agreeable evening.

Not so Mrs. Hannaford, who, just before dinner, had received a letter, which at once she destroyed.  The missive ran thus: