When Lady Markham had sufficiently overcome the sharp keenness of this latest wound, her ear was caught by a murmur of voices in the other room. This had been going on, she was vaguely sensible, for some time through all Mr. Stainforth’s lingering and leavetaking, and through her own conversation with Paul; voices that were low and soft--not obtrusive; as if the speakers had no wish to attract attention, or to have their talk interfered with. Perhaps this tone is of all others the most likely to provoke any listener into interruption. A vague uneasiness awoke in Lady Markham’s mind. She put back the curtains which had partially veiled the entrance to her own room with a slightly impatient hand. When one is wounded and aching in heart and mind, it is so hard not to be impatient. Alice had seated herself in a low chair, half hidden in one of the lace curtains that veiled a window, and Fairfax was leaning against the window talking to her. There was something tender and confidential in the sound of his voice. It was he who spoke most, but her replies were in the same tone, a tone of which both were entirely unconscious, but which struck Lady Markham with mingled suspicion and alarm. How had these two got to know each other well enough to speak in such subdued voices? She had never known or realised how much they had been thrown together during her absence in the sick room. When she drew back the curtain, Alice instinctively withdrew her chair a hair’s breadth, and Fairfax stood quite upright, leaning upon the window no longer. This alteration of their attitudes at the sight of her startled Lady Markham still more. Fairfax came forward hurriedly as she came into the drawing-room, a little flushed and nervous. “I hope you will not consider this visit an impertinence,” he said. “I thought I must come with Markham to take care of him. He--twisted his foot--did he tell you? It is all right now, but I thought it would be well to come and take care of him,” Fairfax said, with that conciliatory smile and unnecessary repetition which marked his own consciousness of a feeble cause. “I did not hear anything about it,” Lady Markham said. “He has been writing me very short letters. You are very kind, Mr. Fairfax--very kind; we know that of old.” “That is the last name to give my selfish intrusion,” he said; then added, after a pause, “And I had something I wanted to speak to you about. Did Miss Markham,” he said, hesitating, shifting from one foot to the other, and showing every symptom of extreme embarrassment--“Did Miss Markham tell you--what I had been saying to her?”