She is gone! Blessed, blessed author of the Féodorovna Candle! Long may his dropless tapers enlighten the world! For a moment, though it is daylight, he has lit up the universe for two persons! One of them apparently feels that his tether is a short one, and that he must take time by the forelock. The door has hardly closed before he says-- “You are not sitting in the same place as you did on Monday!” “No.” The inference that he thinks the change not one for the better is so clear that there would be prudery in ignoring it; and, besides, has not Féodorovna impressed upon her that his lightest whim is to be respected? So she moves with quiet matter-of-factness to the chair originally occupied by her. It cannot be good for his wound that he should slew himself round, as he was doing a moment ago, to get a better prospect of her. “Thank you! Thank you also a thousand times more for coming to see me again.” “Why shouldn’t I come to see you again?” The question is addressed more to herself in reality than to him, and is an answer to her own misgivings rather than to his gratitude. A slight shade of surprise crosses the eager brightness of his face. “You did not see your way to it at first, so Mrs. Prince told me.” “I did not want to stand in the way of other visitors,” she answers--“my uncle, Rupert,” adding with difficulty, “We all claim our part in Bill’s friend.” She looks steadily at him, and sees a sort of chill come into his eyes--at her lumping of herself and her family in a cold generalization. “Rupert!” he says, repeating the name lingeringly, and with an involuntarily reluctant intonation. “Yes; I have heard of Rupert.” “From Bill?” “Yes, from Bill--and from others.” The slight hesitation that intervenes between “Bill” and the “others” tells her that he knows. How should he not know, indeed? Is it likely that, in his state of tedious invalidhood, he should not have been told any bit of local gossip that might give him a moment’s distraction? To him, her engagement to marry Rupert is just a bit of local gossip, neither more nor less. No doubt that the news was imparted--why should it not be?--by Féodorovna. “So you see,” she says, struggling with the senseless feeling of resentment and vexation that has invaded her heart, “my time is not always my own.” “I see!” He lies quite silent for a minute or two, looking out of the window at a burgeoning sycamore, then adds, in a would-be cheerful voice, “It is kind of him to spare you to me for half an hour; but he seemed such a kind fellow when he came to see me the other day: one of my bandages got a little out of gear, and he put it right for me, with a touch as gentle as a woman’s.”