intention and without defiance, but from the simple sincerity of her
pain, a longer look into the eyes than she had ever given her before.
Mrs. Churchley's onyx pupils reflected the question as distant dark
windows reflect the sunset; they seemed to say: "Yes, I AM, if
that's what you want to know!"

What made the case worse, what made the girl more sure, was the
silence preserved by her companion in the brougham on their way home.
They rolled along in the June darkness from Prince's Gate to Seymour
Street, each looking out of a window in conscious prudence; watching
but not seeing the hurry of the London night, the flash of lamps, the
quick roll on the wood of hansoms and other broughams. Adela had
expected her father would say something about Mrs. Churchley; but
when he said nothing it affected her, very oddly, still more as if he
had spoken. In Seymour Street he asked the footman if Mr. Godfrey
had come in, to which the servant replied that he had come in early
and gone straight to his room. Adela had gathered as much, without
saying so, from a lighted window on the second floor; but she
contributed no remark to the question. At the foot of the stairs her
father halted as if he had something on his mind; but what it
amounted to seemed only the dry "Good-night" with which he presently
ascended. It was the first time since her mother's death that he had
bidden her good-night without kissing her. They were a kissing
family, and after that dire event the habit had taken a fresh spring.
She had left behind her such a general passion of regret that in
kissing each other they felt themselves a little to be kissing her.
Now, as, standing in the hall, with the stiff watching footman--she
could have said to him angrily "Go away!"--planted near her, she
looked with unspeakable pain at her father's back while he mounted,
the effect was of his having withheld from another and a still more