He could not say that it had inspired him in the least, but it formed a very essential part of his triumph.

He could wish her more exacting, but this time he had done something that should make her less easy to satisfy in the future.

Unconsciously he hastened his steps through the gardens, switching off a daisy head now and then with his stick as he went, and pausing only once, when he found himself, to his utter astonishment, asking a purely incidental errand boy if he wanted sixpence.
Janet, in the drawing-room, received him with hardly a quickening of pulse.

It was so nearly over now; she seemed to have packed up a good part of her tiresome heart-ache with the warm things Lady Halifax had dictated for the Atlantic.

She had a vague expectation that it would reappear, but not until she unlocked the box, in mid-ocean, where it wouldn't matter so much.