"
Stephen looked with some fixedness at a point on the other side of the
room. The platitude brought him, by some process of inversion, the
vision of a drawing-room in Addison gardens, occupied by his mother and
sisters, engaged with whatever may be Kensington's substitutes at the
moment for the spinet and the tambour frame; and he had a disturbed
sense that they might characterise such a statement differently, if,
indeed, they would consent to characterise it at all. He looked at the
wall as if, being a solid and steadfast object, it might correct the
qualm--it was really something like that--which the wide sweep of her
cynicism brought him.
"From what he told me last week I thought we shouldn't see it. He seemed
determined enough, but depressed and not hopeful. I fancied she was
being upheld--I thought she would easily pull through. Indeed, I wasn't
sure that there was any great temptation. Somebody must be helping him."
"The Devil, no doubt," Hilda replied, concisely; "and with equal
certainty, Miss Alicia Livingstone."
Arnold gave her a look of surprise. "Surely not my cousin!" he
protested. "She can't understand."
"Oh, I beg of you, don't speak to _her_! I think she understands.
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