Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/381

Rh forms of resentful husbands, portionless nieces and undiscoverable philosophers.

We were by this time getting into the whirr of fleeting platforms, the multiplication of lights. "I think you'll find," I said with a laugh, "that the difficulty will disappear in the very fact that the philosopher is undiscoverable."

He began to gather up his papers. "Who can set a limit to the ingenuity of an extravagant woman?"

"Yes, after all, who indeed?" I echoed as I recalled the extravagance commemorated in Mrs. Mulville's anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty pounds.

The thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George Gravener was the way Saltram's name kept out of it. It seemed to me at the time that we were quite pointedly silent about him; yet afterwards I inclined to think that there had been on my companion's part no conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons the reason, namely, of my perceiving more completely that, for evil as well as for good, he left Gravener's imagination utterly cold. Gravener was not afraid of him; he was too much disgusted with him. No more was I, doubtless, and for very much the same reason. I treated my friend's story as an absolute confidence; but when before Christmas, by Mrs. Saltram, I was informed of Lady Coxon's death without having had news of Miss Anvoy's return, I found myself taking for granted that we should hear no more of these nuptials, in which I now recognised an element incongruous from Rh