CHAPTER V

"_A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer,
A little talking of outward things._"

JEAN INGELOW


Ah, the weeks that followed! People ate and drank and slept, lived and
loved and hated, were born and died,--the same world that it had been a
little while before, yet not the same to them,--never to seem quite the
same again. A little cloud had fallen between them and it, and changed
to their eyes all its proportions and hues.

They were incessantly together, riding, or driving, or walking, looking
at pictures, dancing at parties, listening to opera or play.

"It seems to me Will is going it at a pretty tremendous pace somewhere,"
said Mr. Surrey to his wife, one morning, after this had endured for a
space. "It would be well to look into it, and to know something of this
girl."

"You are right," she replied. "Yet I have such absolute faith in
Willie's fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety."

"Nor I; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta's."