We had, indeed, recognised each other in that brief meeting of our eyes.
Some kind of challenge had passed between us. I had dared her to drop that
disguise of trickery and show herself as she was; and her response had
been an admission that she acknowledged not me, but my recognition of her.

How far the fact that I had truly appraised her real worth might influence
her, in time, to think gently of me, I could not guess; but I hoped, even
a little vaingloriously, that she would respond to our mutual appreciation
of truth. I had shown her, I believed, how greatly I admired the spirit
she had been at such pains to conceal during that talk in the honest
sitting-room of the Home Farm. And I felt that her failure to resent the
impertinence of my "No doubt, you're used to that," had been due to an
understanding of something she and I had in common against the whole
solid, stolid, aristocratic family of Jervaise.

Moreover, she gave me what I counted as two more causes for hopefulness
before we left the house. The first was her repetition, given, now, with a
more vibrating sincerity, of the belief that we should find Brenda safely
at home when we got back to the Hall.

"I feel sure you will, Mr. Jervaise," she said, and the slight pucker of
anxiety between her eyebrows was an earnest that even if her belief was a
little tremulous, her hope, at least, was unquestionably genuine.

The second sign was the acceptance of a hackneyed commonplace; the proffer
of a friendly message through the medium of a cliché which, however false
in its general application, offered a short cut to the interpretation of
feeling. Racquet who had maintained a well-bred silence from the first
moment of his mistress's reproof, had honoured me with his approval while