Isabel could not have told you why, but she found something that ministered to mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the Interviewer had struck with Lady Pensil's brother; her amusement moreover subsisted in face of the fact that she thought it a credit to each of them.

Isabel couldn't rid herself of a suspicion that they were playing somehow at cross-purposes--that the simplicity of each had been entrapped.

But this simplicity was on either side none the less honourable.

It was as graceful on Henrietta's part to believe that Mr.
Bantling took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism and in consolidating the position of lady-correspondents as it was on the part of his companion to suppose that the cause of the Interviewer--a periodical of which he never formed a very definite conception--was, if subtly analysed (a task to which Mr.Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss Stackpole's need of demonstrative affection.

Each of these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which the other was impatiently conscious.