“Is it possible that you have seen him and still ask that?” said he.  “He is Grenoble.  Once the Chilterns were.  He is the head of the honoured firm of Israel Simpson and Sons, the president of the Grenoble National Bank, the senior warden of the church, a director in the railway.  Twice a year, in the columns of the New York newspapers dedicated to the prominent arrivals at the hotels, you may read the name of Israel Simpson of Grenoble.  Three times has he been abroad, respectably accompanied by Maria, who invariably returns to read a paper on the cathedrals and art before the Woman’s Club.”

Maria is his wife, I suppose.”

“Yes.  Didn’t you run across Maria?  She’s quite as pronounced, in her way, as Israel.  A very tower of virtue.”

“I didn’t meet anybody, Hugh,” said Honora.  “I’ll—­I’ll look for her next Sunday.  I hurried out.  It was a little embarrassing the first time,” she added, “your family being so prominent in Grenoble.”

Upon this framework, the prominence of his family, she built up during the coning week a new structure of hope.  It was strange she had never thought before of this quite obvious explanation for the curiosity of Grenoble.  Perhaps—­perhaps it was not prejudice, after all—­or not all of it.  The wife of the Chiltern heir would naturally inspire a considerable interest in any event, and Mrs. Hugh Chiltern in particular.  And these people would shortly understand, if they did not now understand, that Hugh had come back voluntarily and from a sense of duty to assume the burdens and responsibilities that so many of his generation and class had shirked.  This would tell in their favour, surely.  At this point in her meditations she consulted the mirror, to behold a modest, slim-waisted young woman becomingly arrayed in white linen, whose cheeks were aglow with health, whose eyes seemingly reflected the fire of a distant high vision.  Not a Poppaea, certainly, nor a Delila.  No, it was unbelievable that this, the very field itself of their future labours, should be denied them.  Her heart, at the mere conjecture, turned to stone.

During the cruise of the Adhemar she had often watched, in the gathering darkness, those revolving lights on headland or shoal that spread now a bright band across the sea, and again left the waters desolate in the night.  Thus, ceaselessly revolving from white hope to darker doubt, were her thoughts, until sometimes she feared to be alone with them, and surprised him by her presence in his busiest moments.  For he was going ahead on the path they had marked out with a faith in which she could perceive no flaw.  If faint and shadowy forms had already come between them, he gave no evidence of having as yet discerned these.  There was the absence of news from his family, for instance,—­the Graingers, the Stranger, the Shorters, and the Pendletons, whom she had never seen; he had never spoken to her of this, and he seemed to hold it as of no account.  Her instinct whispered that it had left its mark, a hidden mark.  And while she knew that consideration for her prompted him to hold his peace, she told herself that she would have been happier had he spoken of it.