youth.

Her memories were sweet and bitter; they made her heart glow and ache.
Vellan, as she recalled him, had been, before all things, gentle. He
was witty, he had humour, he had imagination; but he was, before all
things, gentle--with the gentlest voice, the gentlest eyes, the
gentlest manners. His gentleness, she told herself, was the chief
element of his charm--his gentleness, which was really a phase of his
modesty. 'He was very gentle, he was very modest, he was very graceful
and kind,' she said; and she remembered a hundred instances of his
gentleness, his modesty, his kindness. Oh, but he was no milksop. He
had plenty of spirit, plenty of fun; he was boyish, he could romp. And
at that, a scene repeated itself to her mind, a scene that had passed
in this same drawing-room more than thirty years ago. It was
tea-time, and on the tea-table lay a dish of pearl biscuits, and she
and her husband and Vellan were alone. Her husband took a handful of
pearl biscuits, and tossed them one by one into the air, while Vellan
threw back his head, and caught them in his mouth as they came
down--that was one of his accomplishments. She smiled as she
remembered it, but at the same time she put her handkerchief to her
eyes.

'Why did he go away? What could it have been?' she wondered, her old
bewilderment at his conduct, her old longing to comprehend it,
reviving with something of the old force. 'Could it have been...?
Could it have been...?' And an old guess, an old theory, one she had
never spoken to anybody, but had pondered much in silence, again
presented itself interrogatively to her mind.

The door opened; the butler mumbled a name; and she saw a tall,