It was as if the strain upon her rendered her gently autocratic to Robert Grimshaw, who watched her from another point, having settled himself down in the arm-chair before the window looking into the little back room. Against the rows of the stained-glass window Ellida Langham appeared all black, impulsive, and ready as it were to stretch out her arms to enfold this little creature in her cloak, to hide her face under the great black hat with the drooping veil and the drooping feathers. But as he understood it, Pauline fended off these approaches by the attentive convention of her manner. They were in face of Dudley Leicester’s condition; they had him under their eyes, but Pauline was not going--even to the extent of accepting Ellida’s tenderness--to acknowledge that there was any condition about Dudley Leicester at all. It wasn’t, of course, that Ellida didn’t know, for Robert Grimshaw himself had told her, and Ellida, with her great and impulsive tenderness, had herself offered to come round and to play at animated conversations with Dudley and Mr. Held. But except by little pressures of the hand at meeting or at parting, and by little fluttering attentions to Ellida’s hats and toilets when she rose to go, Pauline was not going to show either gratitude or emotion for the moment. It was her way of keeping her flag flying. And he admired her for it as he admired her for everything, and looking down at Peter between his feet, Robert shook his head very sadly. “Perhaps,” he thought to himself, “until she knows it’s hopeless, she’s not going to acknowledge even to herself that there’s anything the matter at all.” II BETWEEN his feet Peter’s nostrils jerked twice, and a little bubble of sound escaped. He was trying to tell his master that a bad man was coming up the stairs. It was, however, only Sir William Wells who, with his brisk straightforwardness and his frowning authority, seemed to push himself into the room as its master, and to scatter the tables and chairs before him. In his harsh and minatory tones he informed them that the Marchioness of Sandgate had gone to Exeter with Mrs. Jjohns, and then he appeared to scatter the little group. It was, indeed, as if he had thrown Ellida out of the room, so quickly--whilst she exclaimed over her shoulder to Grimshaw: “Well, you’ll be round to dinner?”--did she disappear.