Upstairs in the drawing-room the five women settled down in a confidential group, and with one accord fell to discussing Mr. Wyndham. Miss Craven began it by mildly wondering whether he "looked so disagreeable on purpose, or because he couldn't help it." On the whole, she inclined to the more charitable view. "What do you say, Kathy?" asked Audrey, without looking up. "I agree with Miss Craven in thinking nature responsible for Mr. Wyndham's manners." Mrs. Dixon Barnett disapproved of Katherine, but she joined in here with a guttural assent. "Poor man," said Miss Gladys Armstrong, "he certainly hasn't improved since that affair with Miss Fraser." Audrey looked up suddenly,--"What affair?" "Don't you know? They were engaged a long time, wedding-day fixed and everything, when she broke it off suddenly, without a word of warning." "Why?" "Why indeed! She left her reasons to the imagination." "When did it happen?" "Just about this time last year. I can't think what made her do it, unless she had a turn for psychical research--raking in the ashes of his past, and that sort of thing." "Was he very much cut up about it?" "He didn't whine. But he's got an ugly wound somewhere about him. Curious man, Langley Wyndham. I haven't got to the bottom of him yet; and I flatter myself I know most men. My diagnosis is generally pretty correct. He's a very interesting type." "Very," said Audrey below her breath. The novelist knitted her brows and fell into a reverie. Her interest in Langley Wyndham was not a purely professional one. Audrey reflected too. "Just about this time last year. That might account for things." She would have liked to ask more; but further discussion of his history was cut short by the entrance of Wyndham himself, followed by the rest. Mr. Flaxman Reed was the first to take the empty seat by Audrey's side. He remembered the talk he had with her at Oxford--that talk which had provoked Wyndham's sarcastic comments. Himself a strange compound of intellectual subtilty and broad simplicity of character, he had taken Audrey's utterances in good faith. She had spoken to him of spiritual things, in one of those moments of self-revelation which, he knew well, come suddenly to those--especially to women--whose inner life is troubled. But this was not the atmosphere to revive such themes in. He had no part in Audrey's and in Wyndham's world,--the world which cared nothing for the principles he represented, those two great ideals which he served in his spirit and his body--the unity of the Church and the celibacy of the priesthood. But Audrey interested him. He had first met, last seen her, during a spiritual and intellectual crisis. He had stood alone then, severed from those dearest to him by troubled seas of controversy; and a word, a look, had passed which showed that she, this woman, sympathised with him. It was enough; there still clung to her the grave and tender associations of that time.