Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/107

Rh recent visit at Coldfield she had nearly won over Lady Maddock. I gathered from something he dropped later that the free-handed gentleman beyond the seas had not made a settlement, but had given a handsome present, and was apparently to be looked to, across the water, for other favors. People are simplified alike by great contentments and great yearnings, and whether or no it was Gravener's directness that begot my own, I seem to recall that in some turn taken by our talk he almost imposed it on me as an act of decorum to ask if Miss Anvoy had also, by chance, expectations from her aunt. My enquiry drew out that Lady Coxon, who was the oddest of women, would have in any contingency to act under her late husband's will, which was odder still; saddling her with a mass of queer obligations complicated with queer loopholes. There were several dreary people—Coxon cousins, old maids—to whom she would have more or less to minister. Gravener laughed, without saying no, when I suggested that the young lady might come in through a loophole; then suddenly, as if he suspected that I had turned a lantern on him, he exclaimed quite dryly: "That's all rot—one is moved by other springs!"

A fortnight later, at Lady Coxon's own house, I understood well enough the springs one was moved by. Gravener had spoken of me there as an old friend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine. The knight's widow was again indisposed—she had succumbed at the eleventh hour; so that I