‘Yes, Edward,’ said Carry gently. She smiled very sweetly upon him, with a curious tender smile, but she did not say any more. ‘You speak as if you did not think it worth my while,’ he said, a little annoyed by her composure. ‘Oh, no. I think it quite worth your while,’ she said. He went off a little disturbed, vexed, half angry, half sad, but certainly stimulated by her. Was it indifference? What was it? Had she responded as of old they would have talked the matter over between them and taken away all its interest; but as she did not respond Beaufort felt the fire burn. He went off to his room, and got out all his preparatory notes and the beginning of the long interrupted manuscript, and worked with vigour all night, throwing his opposite views hastily upon paper. Next day he announced to his wife that he meant ‘to review that fellow’s book’--as the quickest and surest way of expressing his dissent. ‘Yes,’ she said once more, but with a little rising colour, ‘when, Edward?’ ‘Oh, I’ll send it to “Bowles,”’ he said, meaning ‘The Nineteenth Century’ of that day. Of course, ‘The Nineteenth Century’ itself had not yet begun its dignified career. And he did an hour’s work that morning, but with softened zeal; and in the afternoon he repeated to himself that it was scarcely worth his while. The people who had read that fellow’s book would not care to read a review; they would be people on the other side, quite unlikely to pay any attention to the opposite argument. And as for the general public, the general public did not care a straw for all the social philosophy or political economy in the world. So, after another hour’s deliberation he put all the papers back again--What was the use?--and went into the county club and brought back a very amusing story of the complicated metaphors and confused reasoning of some of the gentlemen there. It did not strike him that Carry never asked whether he had finished the review, or how he was going to treat the subject. But he remarked her smile with a curious sensation which he could not explain. It seemed to him something new--very sweet (her smile had always been sweet), very patient, indulgent, with a look of forgiving in it, though he did not know very well what there was to forgive. He forgot in a short time all about the answer he had intended to write to that book, and even the review into which his intended answer had so soon slid--in intention; but he was haunted for a very long time by Carry’s smile. What did it mean? Tom and Janet were just as little aware why it was that their mother was so much more with them than of old, but this had come on gradually, and it did not strike them except by moments. ‘Why, you’re always with mother now,’ Tom said when he came home for his holidays. He was now at Eton, and, though he had been in several scrapes, had managed to keep his place and was in high hopes of getting into the boats, which was the only distinction he had any chance of.