began to seem to him extraordinary! However, at last, the monotony of the
Etretât postmarks was broken by a postcard from Lyons. 'We are here for
the night on some business of Paul's; to-morrow we hope to be at Turin,
and two or three days later at Venice. By the way, where will the
Brethertons be? I must trust to my native wits, I suppose, when I get
there. She is not the sort of light to be hidden under a bushel.'

This postcard disturbed Kendal not a little, and he felt irritably that
somebody had mismanaged matters. He had supposed, and indeed suggested,
that Miss Bretherton should enclose his note in one of her own to his
sister's Paris address, giving, at the same time, some indication of a
place of meeting in Venice. But if she had not done this, it was very
possible that the two women might miss each other after all. Sometimes,
when he had been contemplating this possibility with disgust, he would
with a great effort make himself reflect why it was that he cared about
the matter so disproportionately. Why was he so deeply interested in
Isabel Bretherton's movements abroad, and in the meeting which would
bring her, so to speak, once more into his own world? Why! because it was
impossible, he would answer himself indignantly, not to feel a profound
interest in any woman who had ever shared as much emotion with you as she
had with him in those moments at Nuneham, who had received a wound at
your hands, had winced under it, and still had remained gracious, and
kind, and womanly! 'I should be a hard-hearted brute,' he said to
himself, 'if I did not feel a very deep and peculiar interest in her--if
I did not desire that Marie's friendship should abundantly make up to her
for my blundering!'

Did he ever really deceive himself into imagining that this was all? It
is difficult to say. The mind of a man no longer young, and trained in
all the subtleties of thought, does not deal with an invading sentiment