HE quickly remembered that he had not brought in his hat, and also, the next instant, that even to clap it on wouldn’t under the circumstances qualify him for immediate departure from Bounds. Just as it came over him that the obligation he had incurred must keep him at least for the day, he found himself in the presence of his host, who, while his back was turned, had precipitately reappeared and whose vision of the place had resulted in an instant question.

“Mrs. Beever has not come back? Julia wants her Julia must see her! ”

Dennis was separated by the width of the hall from the girl with whom he had just enjoyed such an opportunity of reunion, but there was for the moment no indication that Tony Bream, engrossed with a graver accident, found a betrayal in the space between them. He had, however, for Dennis the prompt effect of a reminder to take care: it was a consequence of the very nature of the man that to look at him was to recognise the value of appearances and that he couldn’t have dropped upon any scene, however disordered, without, by the simple fact, re establishing a superficial harmony. His new friend met him with a movement that might have been that of stepping in front of some object to hide it, while Rose, on her side, sounding out like a touched bell, was already alert with her response. “Ah,” said Dennis, to himself, “ it’s for them she cares! ”

“She has not come back, but if there’s a hurry ”

Rose was all there.

“There is a hurry. Some one must go for her.”

Dennis had a point to make that he must make on the spot. He spoke before Rose’s rejoinder. “ With your increasing anxieties, Mr. Bream, I’m quite ashamed to be quartered on you. Hadn’t I really better be at the inn? ”

“At the inn to go from here? My dear fellow, are you mad? ” Tony sociably scoffed; he wouldn’t hear of it. “ Don’t be afraid; we’ve plenty of use for you if only to keep this young woman quiet.”

“He can be of use this instant.” Rose looked at her suitor as if there were not the shadow of a cloud between them. “ The servants are getting luncheon. Will you go over for Mrs. Beever? ”

“Ah,” Tony demurred, laughing, “we mustn’t make him fetch and carry! ”

Dennis showed a momentary blankness and then, in his private discomposure, jumped at the idea of escaping from the house and into the air. “ Do employ me,” he pleaded. “ I want to stretch my legs I’ll do anything.”

“Since you’re so kind, then, and it’s so near,” Tony replied. “ Mrs. Beever’s our best friend, and always the friend of our friends, and she’s only across the river.”

“Just six minutes,” said Rose, “ by the short way. Bring her back with you.”

“The short way,” Tony pressingly explained, “ is through my garden and out of it by the gate on the river.”

“At the river you turn to the right the little foot-bridge is her bridge,” Rose went on.

“You pass the gatehouse empty and closed at the other side of it, and there you are,” said Tony.

“In her garden it’s lovely. Tell her it’s for Mrs. Bream and it’s important,” Rose added.

“My wife’s calling aloud for her! ” Tony laid his hand, with his flushed laugh, on the young man’s shoulder.

Dennis had listened earnestly, looking at his com panions in turn. “ It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know in the least who I am? ”

“She knows perfectly don’t be shy! ” Rose familiarly exclaimed.

Tony gave him a great pat on the back which sent him off. “ She has even something particular to say to you! She takes a great interest in his rela tions with you,” he continued to Rose as the door closed behind their visitor. Then meeting in her face a certain impatience of any supersession of the question of Julia’s state, he added, to justify his allusion, a word accompanied by the same excited laugh that had already broken from him. “ Mrs. Beever deprecates the idea of any further delay in your marriage and thinks you’ve got quite enough to ‘ set up ’ on. She pronounces your means remark ably adequate.”

“What does she know about our means? ” Rose coldly asked.

“No more, doubtless, than I! But that needn’t prevent her. It’s the wish that’s father to the thought. That’s the result of her general goodwill to you.”

“She has no goodwill of any sort to me. She doesn’t like me.” Rose spoke with marked dryness, in which moreover a certain surprise at the direction of her friend’s humour was visible. Tony was now completely out of his groove; they indeed both were, though Rose was for the moment more successful in concealing her emotion. Still vibrating with the immense effort of the morning and particularly of the last hour, she could yet hold herself hard and observe what was taking place in her companion. He had been through something that had made his nerves violently active, so that his measure of security, of reality almost, was merged in the mere sense of the unusual. It was precisely this evidence of what he had been through that helped the girl’s curiosity to preserve a waiting attitude the firm surface she had triumphantly presented to each of the persons whom, from an early hour, she had had to encounter. But Tony had now the air of not intending to reward her patience by a fresh communication; it was as if some new delicacy had operated and he had struck himself as too explicit. He had looked astonished at her judgment of the lady of Eastmead.

“My dear Rose,” he said, “ I think you’re greatly mistaken. Mrs. Beever much appreciates you.”

She was silent at first, showing him a face worn with the ingenuity of all that in her interview with Dennis Vidal she had had to keep out of it and put into it. “ My dear Tony,” she then blandly replied, “I’ve never known any one like you for not having two grains of observation. I’ve known people with only a little; but a little’s a poor affair. You’ve absolutely none at all, and that, for your character, is the right thing: it’s magnificent and perfect.”

Tony greeted this with real hilarity. “I like a good square one between the eyes! ”

“You can’t like it as much as I............