The first words which she spoke showed to him that her thoughts had not altered their drift.

'Yes, you have changed,' she said, and implied unmistakably, 'for the better.' 'You only mean,' laughed Fielding, 'that I have given up provoking you.' 'No, no,' she said.

'Besides, you evidently haven't given that up.' 'Then in what way ?' 'I shall offend you.' 'I can hardly think so.' 'Well, you were becoming a kind of--' 'Say it.' 'Paul Pry.' To a gentleman whose ambition it had been to combine the hermit's indifference to social obligations with an indulgence in social festivities, the blow was a cruel one; and the more cruel because he realised that Clarice's criticism contained a grain of truth.

He hit back cruelly.

'Drake tells me he thinks of taking a place here.