"Thank you, Jeffers. Yes, that is mine. All right at home, I hope? Your mistress quite well?" "Quite well, sir. She is at home, awaiting you." Dorian turns away with a bitter smile. "At home, awaiting him!" What a wretched fool he once was, when he used to really picture to himself a fair fond woman waiting and longing for his return, whenever Fate had called him from her side! Arriving at Sartoris, he runs up the stairs to his own room, meeting no one on his way. He smiles again--the same unlovely smile--as he tells himself that Jeffers exaggerated the case a little,--as, plainly, Georgie has taken special pains to be out of the way to avoid meeting him on his first arrival. Opening his door, he goes in, closing it firmly behind him. Everything in the room is just as he had left it. Nothing has been changed; the very book he had been reading is lying now open at the page he had last looked into. A glorious fire is burning in the grate. A delicate Bohemian vase is filled with some rare sweet flowers. Whose hand had gathered them? If it was one of the servants, it was very thoughtful. He is very fond of flowers. He moves listlessly about, wondering vaguely how everything can look, after some months' absence, so exactly as if he had seen it only yesterday, when a small object lying on a side-table attracts his notice. It is a little gray glove, soiled, finger-pressed, warm as if its owner but just a minute since had drawn it from her hand. It is yet almost a part of the white, soft flesh it had covered. His brow contracts, and a pained expression crosses his face. Taking it up, he lays it in his open palm, and regards it earnestly; he hesitates, and then, as though unable to prevent himself, he raises it and presses it passionately to his lips. An instant later, with a contemptuous gesture and an inward anathema upon his own weakness, he flings it far from him through the open window down on to the balcony beneath,--where it flutters to Mrs. Branscombe's feet! Mechanically she stoops and picks it up. She has been hurrying towards the house, having only just heard of her husband's arrival, she not having expected him for some time later, trains at Pullingham being none of the most punctual. Gazing at the luckless glove, her whole expression changes. She is beneath his window: was it his hand flung it so disdainfully to the ground,--the glove she had worn such a short time before, when gathering the flowers that are now making his room so sweet? Clasping the unoffending bit of kid closely in her hand, she enters the house, by a wide French window, and goes straight into Dorian's room. At the door she hesitates, and then knocks somewhat nervously. "Come in." His voice has been so long a stranger to her that she almost starts on hearing it, and the last remnant of her courage vanishes. She opens the door and goes slowly in.