support; but it served to carry him lightly and easily over what
is often a period of insecurity and discouragement.

It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in Mrs.
Aubyn as a matter of calculation. It was as instinctive as love,
and it missed being love by just such a hair-breadth deflection
from the line of beauty as had determined the curve of Mrs.
Aubyn's lips. When they met she had just published her first
novel, and Glennard, who afterward had an ambitious man's
impatience of distinguished women, was young enough to be dazzled
by the semi-publicity it gave her. It was the kind of book that
makes elderly ladies lower their voices and call each other "my
dear" when they furtively discuss it; and Glennard exulted in the
superior knowledge of the world that enabled him to take as a
matter of course sentiments over which the university shook its
head. Still more delightful was it to hear Mrs. Aubyn waken the
echoes of academic drawing-rooms with audacities surpassing those
of her printed page. Her intellectual independence gave a touch
of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of
college friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies.
Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to each other the augur's wink
behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked together in that light of
young omniscience from which fate so curiously excludes one's
elders.

Husbands who are notoriously inopportune, may even die
inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two
years after her return to Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife.
He died precisely at the moment when Glennard was beginning to
criticise her. It was not that she bored him; she did what was