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have in any contingency to act under her late husband’s will, which was odder still, saddling her with a mass of queer obligations complicated with queer loopholes. There were several dreary people, Coxon cousins, old maids, to whom she would have more or less to minister. Gravener laughed, without saying no, when I suggested that the young lady might come in through a loophole; then suddenly, as if he suspected my turning a lantern on him, he declared quite dryly: “That’s all rot—one’s moved by other springs!”
    A fortnight later, at Lady Coxon’s own house, I understood well enough the springs one was moved by. Gravener had spoken of me there as an old friend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine. The Knight’s widow was again indisposed—she had succumbed at the eleventh hour; so that I found Miss Anvoy bravely playing hostess without even Gravener’s help, since, to make matters worse, he had just sent up word that the House, the insatiable House, with which he supposed he had contracted for easier terms, positivelydeclined to release him. I was struck with the courage, the grace and gaiety of the young lady left thus to handle the fauna and flora of the Regent’s Park. I did what I could to help her to classify them, after I had recovered from the confusion of seeing her slightly disconcerted at perceiving in the guest introduced by her intended the gentleman with whom she had had that talk about Frank Saltram. I had at this moment my first glimpse of the fact that she was a person who could carry a responsibility; but I leave the reader to judge of my sense of the aggravation, for either of us, of such a burden, when I heard the servant announce Mrs. Saltram. From what immediately passed between the two ladies I gathered that the latter had been sent for posthaste to fill the gap created by the absence of the mistress of the house. “Good!” I remember crying, “she’ll be put by
me
;” and my apprehension was promptly justified. Mrs. Saltram taken in to dinner, and taken in as a consequence of an appeal to her amiability, was Mrs. Saltram with a vengeance. I asked myself what Miss Anvoy meant by doing such things, but the only answer I arrived at was that Gravener was verily fortunate. She hadn’t happened to tell him of her visit to Upper Baker Street, but she’d certainly tell him tomorrow; not indeed that this would make him like any better her having had the innocence to invite such a person as Mrs. Saltram on such an occasion. It could only strike me that I had never seen a young woman put such ignorance into her cleverness, such freedom into her modesty; this, I think, was when, after dinner,she said to me frankly, with almost jubilant mirth: “Oh, you don’t admire Mrs. Saltram?” Why should I? This was truly a young person without guile. I had briefly to consider before I could reply that my objection to the lady named was the objection often uttered about people met at the social board—I knew all her stories. Then as Miss Anvoy remained momentarily vague I added: “Those about her husband.”
    “Oh yes, but there are some new ones.”
    “None for me. Ah, novelty would be pleasant!”
    “Doesn’t it appear that of late he has been particularly horrid?”
    “His fluctuations don’t matter,” I returned, “for at night all cats are grey. You saw the shade of this one the night we waited for him together. What will you have? He has no dignity.”
    Miss Anvoy, who had been introducing with her American distinctness, looked encouragingly round at some of the combinations she had risked. “It’s too bad I can’t see him.”
    “You mean Gravener won’t let you?”
    “I haven’t asked him. He lets me do everything.”
    “But you know he knows him and wonders what some of us see in him.”
    “We haven’t happened to talk of him,” the girl said.
    “Get him to take you some day out to see the Mulvilles.”
    “I thought Mr. Saltram had thrown the Mulvilles