“Mr. Vane, I came to leave a message.”

“Yes?” he said, and glanced at the broad-shouldered, well-groomed figure of Mr. Rangely, who was standing at a discreet distance.

“Your father has had an attack of some kind,—­please don’t be alarmed, he seems to be recovered now,—­and I thought and Dr. Tredway thought you ought to know about it.  The doctor could not leave Ripton, and I offered to come and tell you.”

“An attack?” he repeated.

“Yes.”  Hilary and she related simply how she had found Hilary at Fairview, and how she had driven him home.  But, during the whole of her recital, she could not rid herself of the apprehension that he was thinking her interference unwarranted, her coming an indelicate repetition of the other visit.  As he stood there listening in the gathering dusk, she could not tell from his face what he thought.  His expression, when serious, had a determined, combative, almost grim note in it, which came from a habit he had of closing his jaw tightly; and his eyes were like troubled skies through which there trembled an occasional flash of light.

Victoria had never felt his force so strongly as now, and never had he seemed more distant; at times—­she had thought—­she had had glimpses of his soul; to-night he was inscrutable, and never had she realized the power (which she bad known he must possess) of making himself so.  And to her?  Her pride forbade her recalling at that moment the confidences which had passed between them and which now seemed to have been so impossible.  He was serious because he was listening to serious news—­she told herself.  But it was more than this:  he had shut himself up, he was impenetrable.  Shame seized her; yes, and anger; and shame again at the remembrance of her talk with Euphrasia—­and anger once more.  Could he think that she would make advances to tempt his honour, and risk his good opinion and her own?

Confidence is like a lute-string, giving forth sweet sounds in its perfection; there are none so discordant as when it snaps.

Victoria scarcely heard Austen’s acknowledgments of her kindness, so perfunctory did they seem, so unlike the man she had known; and her own protestations that she had done nothing to merit his thanks were to her quite as unreal.  She introduced him to the Englishman.

“Mr. Rangely has been good enough to come with me,” she said.

“I’ve never seen anybody act with more presence of mind than Miss Flint,” Rangely declared, as he shook Austen’s hand.  “She did just the right thing, without wasting any time whatever.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Austen, cordially enough.  But to Victoria’s keener ear, other tones which she had heard at other times were lacking.  Nor could she, clever as she was, see the palpable reason standing before her!

“I say,” said Rangely, as they drove away, “he strikes me as a remarkably sound chap, Miss Flint.  There is something unusual about him, something clean cut.”