At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance
that clearly supplemented her spoken "How do you do?" by a
tacit (perhaps self-addressed?) "What can bring him here?"

You or I, indeed, or Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, in the fulness of
our knowledge, might very likely have interpreted it rather as
a glance of nervous apprehension. Anyhow, it was a glance that
perfectly checked the impetus of his intent. Something snapped
and gave way within him; and he needed no further signal that
the occasion for passionate avowals was not the present.

And thereupon befell a scene that was really quite too absurd,
that was really childish, a scene over the memory of which, I
must believe, they themselves have sometimes laughed together;
though, at the moment, its absurdity held, for him at least,
elements of the tragic.

He met her in the broad gravelled carriage-sweep, before the
great hall-door. She had on her hat and gloves, as if she were
just going out. It seemed to him that she was a little pale;
her eyes seemed darker than usual, and graver. Certainly--cold
surprise, or nervous apprehension, as you will--her attitude
was by no means cordial. It was not oncoming. It showed none
of her accustomed easy, half-humorous, wholly good-humoured
friendliness. It was decidedly the attitude of a person
standing off, shut in, withheld.

"I have never seen her in the least like this before," he
thought, as he looked at her pale face, her dark, grave eyes;