Of course if she came," he added, "it was to talk to you." "It was to talk to me," Maria returned; on which he was further sure that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't yet told her.

He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself couldn't have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her the close of all uncertainties.

It came out for him more than ever yet that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined to make a difference for him.

The difference for him might not inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his attitude--in other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of Woollett.

She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock that would send him swinging back to Mrs.Newsome.