Her husband indeed was present to feel anything there might be to feel--which was perhaps exactly why this personage was moved promptly to emulate so definite an example of "sloping." He had his occupations--books to arrange perhaps even at Fawns; the idea of the siesta, moreover, in all the conditions, had no need to be loudly invoked.

Maggie, was, in the event, left alone for a minute with Mrs.Assingham, who, after waiting for safety, appeared to have at heart to make a demonstration.

The stage of "talking over" had long passed for them; when they communicated now it was on quite ultimate facts; but Fanny desired to testify to the existence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped.

She was like the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest.

What was clearest, always, in our young woman's imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach.