for me in my room--was a sign that Mrs. Pallant's interview with him
would really have come off. What had she said to him? What strong
measures had she taken? That almost morbid resolution I still seemed to
hear the ring of pointed to conceivable extremities that I shrank from
considering. She had spoken of these things while we parted there as
something she would do for me; but I had made the mental comment in
walking away from her that she hadn't done it yet. It wouldn't truly be
done till Archie had truly backed out. Perhaps it was done by this time;
his avoiding me seemed almost a proof. That was what I thought of most
of the night. I spent a considerable part of it at my window, looking
out to the couchant Alps. HAD he thought better of it?--was he making up
his mind to think better of it? There was a strange contradiction in the
matter; there were in fact more contradictions than ever. I had taken
from Louisa what she told me of Linda, and yet that other idea made me
ashamed of my nephew. I was sorry for the girl; I regretted her loss of
a great chance, if loss it was to be; and yet I hoped her mother's grand
treachery--I didn't know what to call it--had been at least, to her
lover, thoroughgoing. It would need strong action in that lady to
justify his retreat. For him too I was sorry--if she had made on him the
impression she desired. Once or twice I was on the point of getting into
my dressing-gown and going forth to condole with him. I was sure he too
had jumped up from his bed and was looking out of his window at the
everlasting hills.

But I am bound to say that when we met in the morning for breakfast he
showed few traces of ravage. Youth is strange; it has resources that
later experience seems only to undermine. One of these is the masterly
resource of beautiful blankness. As we grow older and cleverer we think
that too simple, too crude; we dissimulate more elaborately, but with an
effect much less baffling. My young man looked not in the least as if he