thinking where she stood? So pretty as she was, so innocent, such a gentle, sweet-natured creature! Alas, alas! In short, James was growing sentimental about Lucy. Man of fashion as he was, with that keen eye for style and the mode, it may well be that Urquhart's interest in her was a kind of _cachet_. A hall-mark! However that may be, James looked at her more curiously during that July than he had done since he saw her first in the garden of Drem House. Yes, Lucy was pretty; more than that, she had charm. He saw it now. She moved her head about like a little bird--and yet she was not a little woman by any means; tall, rather, for a woman. But there was an absence of suspicion about Lucy--or rather of fundamental suspicion (for she was full of little superficial alarms), which was infinitely charming--but how pathetic! It was deeply pathetic; it made him vaguely unhappy, and for a long time he did not know why tears swam into his eyes as he watched her over the top of his evening paper, or was aware (at the tail of his eye) of her quick and graceful motions before her dressing-glass. Studying his feelings deeply, as never before, he found himself out. It was that he was to lose her, had perhaps lost her, just as he had found out how inexpressibly dear she was to be. And amazement came upon him, and dismay to realise that this sweetness of hers, this pliancy of temper, this strength within beauty were really there in her apart from him. As if he had believed that they lay in his esteem! No, indeed: they were her own; she could bestow them where she pleased. But he couldn't touch her--now: he would die sooner than touch her. And he couldn't say anything to her: that would have been to throw up the game. She should never pity him, and give him for pity what would have become, in the very giving, negligible to herself. He knew himself well: he could never ask for a thing. No! but could he get her to ask for something? Ah, then she might find out whom she had married! A man, he judged, of spendthrift generosity, a prodigal of himself. Yes, that was how it must be, if to be at all. He kept his eyes wide, and followed her every movement, with a longing to help which was incessant, like toothache. At the same time he was careful to keep himself quiet. Not a tone of voice must vary, not a daily action betray him. That hand on the shoulder, now, when Urquhart was last here. Too much. There must be no more of it, though he could still feel the softness of her in the tips of his fingers. Thus he braced himself. He held good cards: but he didn't know how good. CHAPTER XVI AMARI ALIQUID