The Coxon Fund

s admirable woman with an early visit. As soon as she arrived I guessed everything, and as soon as she told me that darling Ruth h

nd what was much more to the point was that Mr. Gravener had now raised an objection to it. He had protested at least against her being at Wimbledon, where in

world doesn’t sh

pause. “She s

tating she added: “A

n Fund?”

to her his having

Do you mean she has

ch there can be no two opinions.” To which my frie

h, in its violence, made my visi

wf

ing to do with such

’t!” and Mrs. Mulvi

ain — that she had never influenced anybody and that the girl had only seen and heard and judged for herself. HE had influenced her, if I would, as he did every one who had a soul: that word, as we knew, even expressed feebly the power of the things he said to haunt the mind. How could she, Adelaide, help it if Miss Anvoy’s mind was

hem, rich enough?” I demanded. “Rich enough, I

des, it’s not her own money; she d

not HIS own; and that’s

will she may have the money, but it’s still clearer to her conscience that the original condition, definite, intensely implied

observe, “is a conception superficially

Mr. Gravener’s word

ikes me too. It’s an old wife’s tale. Gravener made some reference to the

“and it’s, for her, exactly this technical weakness

they understood each other. Mrs. Mulville assured me the girl loved him as such a woman could love and that she suffered as such a woman could suffer. Nevertheless she wanted to see ME. At this I sprang up with a groan. “Oh I’m so sorry! — when

ks, but I was pl

why you di

ry well tell you as much as that without telling you what I knew of the reason of it. It was not till a day or two ago,” Mrs. Mulville went

“Why on earth does

u, naturally, ab

gely obvious, and I presently returned: “

!” said Mrs. Mulv

?” The appointment was made definite and I enquired how, al

nd then, as to what we revere him for, in the most wonderful form. His very highest

I asked. “Look out sharp, if he has lately been too prim. He’ll presently tak

s. Mulville dol

voy prepare

wed her parasol into my carpet

I laughed as

nstinct as that which permitted her to laugh out, as for the joy of her difficulty, into the priggish old room. This remarkable young woman could be earnest without being solemn, and at moments when I ought doubtless to have cursed her obstinacy I found myself watching the unstudied play of her eyebrows or the recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness produced by the parting of her lips. These aberrations, I hasten to add, didn’t prevent my learning soon enough why she had wished to see me. Her reason for this was as distinct as her beauty: it was to make me explain what I had meant, on the occasion of our first meeting, by Mr. Saltram’s want of dignity. It wasn’t that she couldn’t i

o saddle me with any portion of it. The Mulvilles were sympathy itself, but were they absolutely candid? Could they indeed be, in their position — would it even have been to be desired? Yes, she had sent for me to ask no less than that of me — whether there was anything dreadful kept back. She made no allusion whatever to George Gravener — I thought her silence the only good taste and her gaiety perhaps a part of the very anxiety of that discretion, the effect of a determination that people shouldn’t know from herself that her relations with the man she was to marry were strained. All the weight, however, that she left me to throw was a sufficient implication of the weight HE had thrown in vain. Oh she knew the question of character

ng out,” I evasively replied, “gives me an extraordin

station, as the result of any word of mine, embarrassed me; but while I was thinking how to reassure her the flush passed away in a smile of exquisite good nature. “Oh you see one forgets so wonderfully how one dislikes him!” she said; and if her tone simply extinguished his strange figure with the brush of its compassion, it also rings in my

arance he presented of wanting the miserable money. This was the hidden reason of her alienation. The probable sincerity, in spite of the illiberality, of his scruples about the particular use of it under discussion didn’t efface the ugliness of his demand that they should buy a good house with it.