He was more curious, perhaps, but less disturbed than either of the Cardiffs as the days went by and Elfrida made no sign.
He felt, however, that his curiosity was too irreligious to obtrude upon Janet; besides, his knowledge of her hurt anxiety kept him within the bounds of the simplest inquiry, while she, noting his silence, believed him to be eating his heart out.

In the end it was the desire to relieve and to satisfy Janet that took him to the _Age_ office.
It might be impossible for her to make such inquiries, he told himself, but no obligation could possibly attach to him, except--and his heart throbbed affirmatively at this--the obligation of making Janet happier about it.
He could have laughed, aloud when he heard the scheme from Rattray's lips--it so perfectly filled out his picture, his future projection of Elfrida; he almost assured himself that he had imagined and expected it.
But his desire to relieve Janet was suddenly lost in an upstarting brood of impulses that took him to the railway station with the smile still upon his lips.

Here was a fresh development; his interest was keenly awake again, he would go and verify the facts.

When his earlier intention reoccurred to him in the train, he dismissed it with the thought that what he had seen would be more effective, more disillusionizing, than what he had merely heard.

He triumphed in advance over Janet's disillusion, but he thought more eagerly of the pleasure of proving, with his own eyes, another step in the working out of the problem which he believed he had solved in Elfrida.
"Big house to-night, sir.