What change was it that the touch of English ground--the sight of Martindale--had wrought?
He talked with some readiness of the early stages of his mission--of the kindness shown to him by English public men, and the impressions of a first night in the House of Commons.

But his manner was constrained; anything that he said might have been heard by all the world; and as their talk progressed, Elizabeth felt a miserable paralysis descending on her own will.

She grew whiter and whiter.

This old house in which they sat, with its splendours and treasures, this environment of the past all about them seemed to engulf and entomb them both.

She had looked forward with a girlish pleasure--and yet with a certain tremor--to showing Anderson her old home, the things she loved and had inherited.