The young man rose from his couch, pulling himself together
sufficiently to reply that his health was well enough but that his
spirits were down in his hoots. He had a strong disposition to
"draw" his landlady on the subject of Mrs. Ryves, as well as a vivid
conviction that she constituted a theme as to which Mrs. Bundy would
require little pressure to tell him even more than she knew. At the
same time he hated to appear to pry into the secrets of his absent
friend; to discuss her with their bustling hostess resembled too much
for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant about an unconscious
employer. He left out of account however Mrs. Bundy's knowledge of
the human heart, for it was this fine principle that broke down the
barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was not meddling
with Mrs. Ryves's affairs to try and find out if she struck such an
observer as happy. Crudely, abruptly, even a little blushingly, he
put the direct question to Mrs. Bundy, and this led tolerably
straight to another question, which, on his spirit, sat equally heavy
(they were indeed but different phases of the same), and which the
good woman answered with expression when she ejaculated: "Think it a
liberty for you to run down for a few hours? If she do, my dear sir,
just send her to me to talk to!" As regards happiness indeed she
warned Baron against imposing too high a standard on a young thing
who had been through so much, and before he knew it he found himself,
without the responsibility of choice, in submissive receipt of Mrs.
Bundy's version of this experience. It was an interesting picture,
though it had its infirmities, one of them congenital and consisting
of the fact that it had sprung essentially from the virginal brain of
Miss Teagle. Amplified, edited, embellished by the richer genius of
Mrs. Bundy, who had incorporated with it and now liberally introduced
copious interleavings of Miss Teagle's own romance, it gave Peter