Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/86

74 "I think he's afraid of her—"

Traffle had so begun, but she had already taken him up. "And you're not, you mean,—and that's why you're so eager?"

"Ah, my dear, my dear?" He met it with his strained grimace. "Let us by all means," he also, however, said, "have him if we can."

On which it was, for a little, that they strangely faced each other. She let his accommodation lie while she kept her eyes on him, and in a moment she had come up, as it were, elsewhere. "If I thought you'd see her—!"

"That I'd see her?"—for she had paused again.

"See her, and go on with her,—well, without my knowledge," quavered poor Jane, "I assure you you'd seem to me even worse than her. So, will you promise me?" she ardently added.

"Promise you what, dear?" He spoke quite mildly.

"Not to see her in secret,—which I believe would kill me."

"Oh, oh, oh, love!" Traffle smiled, while she positively glared.

IV

days having elapsed, however, he had to feel that things had considerably moved, on his being privileged to hear his wife, in the drawing-room, where they entertained Mr Puddick at tea, put the