"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it." "Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly. "Yes"--still with that acrid smile--"after you were gone, I had the honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all the polish off!" She has sunk down upon the sofa, over which a great woollen _haik_, dyed with harmonious dull tints, is thrown. "Do not sneer at me!" she says faintly. "You would not if you knew how you hurt me. Is he--is he--how is he?" "He is not ill." The answer ought to be reassuring; but there is something in the manner in which it is uttered that tells her that it neither is, nor is meant to be so. It is so ominous that her lips, after a feeble effort or two, give up the endeavour to frame any query. All her power of interrogation has passed into those eyes, out of which her companion has been so brilliantly successful in chasing their transient morning mirth. "When a man," says Jim gravely, "at the outset of his life, gets such a facer as he did, if he has not a very strong character, it is apt to drive him off the rails, to give him a shove downwards." "I see; and you think I have given him a shove downwards?" "Yes." There is a pause. Jim's eyes are resolutely turned away from the face of Elizabeth, upon whose small white area twitches of pain are making cruel disfigurement. He does not want to have his heart softened towards her, so he stares persistently over her head at a Mussulman praying-carpet, which, old and still rich-toned, despite the wearing of pious knees, hangs on the wall. At length she speaks, in a key as low as--were not the room so entirely still--would be inaudible. "If I had married him, I should have given him a much worse shove down." Jim holds his breath. Is he about to hear from her own lips that secret which he has magnanimously resisted all opportunities of hearing from other sources? But the words that, after a pause, follow this almost whispered statement are not a confession. They are only an appeal. "You would be doing the kindest thing that you ever did in your life, if you could bring yourself to say that you thought I did it for the best." He feels that if he submits his eyes to hers, his will must go with them; he will have no power left of dissent from any request she may choose to make; so he still stares over her head at a screen which hides the doorless entrance to the third room of the little suite. One leaf, folded back, gives a peep through the little chamber, through its deep-arched window to where a date-palm stands up straight against the sea. "I could not possibly say that unless I knew the circumstances of the case," he answers judicially.