Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/136

124 would show as little as possible before she should be ready to show every thing. What this final exhibition might be, on the part of a girl perceptibly so able to think things out, I found it great sport to forecast. It would have been exciting to be approached by her, appealed to by her for advice; but I prayed to Heaven I mightn't find myself in such a predicament. If there was really a present rigor in the situation of which Gravener had sketched for me the elements, she would have to get out of her difficulty by herself. It was not I who had launched her, and it was not I who could help her. I didn't fail to ask myself why, since I couldn't help her, I should think so much about her. It was in part my suspense that was responsible for this; I waited impatiently to see whether she wouldn't have told Mrs. Mulville a portion at least of what I had learned from Gravener. But I saw Mrs. Mulville was still reduced to wonder what she had come out again for, if she hadn't come as a conciliatory bride. That she had come in some other character was the only thing that fitted all the appearances. Having, for family reasons, to spend sometime that spring in the west of England, I was in a manner out of earshot of the great oceanic rumble (I mean of the continuous hum of Saltram's thought), and my uneasiness tended to keep me quiet. There was something I wanted so little to have to say that my prudence surmounted my curiosity. I only wondered if Ruth Anvoy talked over the idea of the Coxon Fund with Lady