“Wait a bit,” it whispered in his ear.  “You were there only yesterday.  It can’t fail, therefore, to seem extraordinary, your calling again to-day.  You must be prepared with an excuse, an explanation.  But suppose, when you arrive, suppose that (like the lady in the ballad) she greets you with ’a glance of cold surprise’—­what then, my dear?  Why, then, it’s obvious, you can’t allege the true explanation—­can you?  If she greets you with a glance of cold, surprise, you ’ll have your answer, as it were, before the fact you ’ll know that there’s no manner of hope for you; and the time for passionate avowals will automatically defer itself.  But then—?  How will you justify your visit?  What face can you put on?”

“H’m,” assented Peter, “there’s something in that.”

“There’s a great deal in that,” said the demon.  “You must have an excuse up your sleeve, a pretext.  A true excuse is a fine thing in its way; but when you come to a serious emergency, an alternative false excuse is indispensable.”

“H’m,” said Peter.

However, if there are demons in the atmosphere, there are gods in the machine—­(Paraschkine even goes so far as to maintain that there are more gods in the machine than have ever been taken from it.”) While Peter stood still, pondering the demon’s really rather cogent intervention, his eye was caught by something that glittered in the grass at the roadside.

“The Cardinal’s snuff-box,” he exclaimed, picking it up.

The Cardinal had dropped his snuff-box.  Here was an excuse, and to spare.  Peter rang the bell.

XXIV

And, like the lady in the ballad, sure enough, she greeted his arrival with a glance of cold surprise.

At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance that clearly supplemented her spoken “How do you do?” by a tacit (perhaps self-addressed?) “What can bring him here?”

You or I, indeed, or Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, in the fulness of our knowledge, might very likely have interpreted it rather as a glance of nervous apprehension.  Anyhow, it was a glance that perfectly checked the impetus of his intent.  Something snapped and gave way within him; and he needed no further signal that the occasion for passionate avowals was not the present.

And thereupon befell a scene that was really quite too absurd, that was really childish, a scene over the memory of which, I must believe, they themselves have sometimes laughed together; though, at the moment, its absurdity held, for him at least, elements of the tragic.

He met her in the broad gravelled carriage-sweep, before the great hall-door.  She had on her hat and gloves, as if she were just going out.  It seemed to him that she was a little pale; her eyes seemed darker than usual, and graver.  Certainly—­cold surprise, or nervous apprehension, as you will—­her attitude was by no means cordial.  It was not oncoming.  It showed none of her accustomed easy, half-humorous, wholly good-humoured friendliness.  It was decidedly the attitude of a person standing off, shut in, withheld.