little difficult and delicate. It involved an intimacy, a closer
intimacy than adoption: having her there in his library at all hours to
work with him; and always that little uneasy consciousness of hers.

Well, well, he had set the tone to-night for all their future
intercourse; he had in the most delicate way possible let her see. It
seemed to him, looking back on it, that he had exercised a perfect tact,
parting from her with that air of gaiety and light badinage which his
own instinct of self-preservation so happily suggested. Yet he smiled
when he recalled her look as she went from him, backing, backing, to the
door; it made him feel very tender and chivalrous; virtuous too, as if
somehow he had overcome some unforeseen and ruinous impulse. And all the
time he hadn't had any impulse beyond the craving to talk to an
intelligent and attractive stranger, to talk about his League.

Mr. Waddington went to bed thinking about it. He even woke his wife up
out of her sleep with the request that she would remind him to call at
Underwoods first thing in the morning.


2

As soon as he was awake he thought of Underwoods. Underwoods was
important. He had to round up the county, and he couldn't do that
without first consulting Sir John Corbett, of Underwoods. As a matter
of form, a mere matter of form, of course, he would have to consult him.

But the more he thought about it the less he liked the idea of
consulting anybody. He was desperately afraid that, if he once began
letting people into it, his scheme, his League, would be taken away from