immediately have recognised his description of her, whether she had
been seen at other hours. His delicacy had kept him from asking
any question about her at any time, and it was exactly the same
virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her at the
concert.

This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she
finally met his eyes--it was after a fourth trial--to predetermine
quite fixedly his awaiting her retreat. He joined her in the
street as soon as she had moved, asking her if he might accompany
her a certain distance. With her placid permission he went as far
as a house in the neighbourhood at which she had business: she let
him know it was not where she lived. She lived, as she said, in a
mere slum, with an old aunt, a person in connexion with whom she
spoke of the engrossment of humdrum duties and regular occupations.
She wasn't, the mourning niece, in her first youth, and her
vanished freshness had left something behind that, for Stransom,
represented the proof it had been tragically sacrificed. Whatever
she gave him the assurance of she gave without references. She
might have been a divorced duchess--she might have been an old maid
who taught the harp.



CHAPTER V.



They fell at last into the way of walking together almost every
time they met, though for a long time still they never met but at