But his interest in others amounted to a passion. He drew slowly through his hand a little chain, looking at each link with kindly compassion. The first link had been the expression in Janey's eyes when his nephew had unconsciously maligned Annette. The sudden relief as from pain, the exultation in those gentle, patient eyes, had brought him instantly to her side as her ally against herself. And in his interview with her, the commonplace pitiful reason had spread itself out before him. She loved some one, probably Mr. Black, or her cousin Roger--at any rate some one who was drifting into love with Annette. He felt confident when he left Janey that she would not use her weapon against Annette as a means to regain her lover--that Annette was safe as far as she was concerned. Janey was not of those who blindfold their own eyes for long. He had, he knew, removed the bandage from them. That was all that was necessary. And now here was Roger, kindly, sociable Roger, whom he had always got on with so well,--in spite of the secret contempt of the country-bred man for a man who neither shoots not hunts,--here was Roger suddenly metamorphosed into a laconic poker, hardly willing to exchange a word with himself or Annette at luncheon. Mr. Stirling perceived, not without amusement, that Roger was acutely jealous of him, and drew the last link of the chain through his hand. Then it was Roger to whom Janey Manvers was attached, Roger who was in love with Annette? That good-looking Mr. Black apparently did not come into the piece at all. The situation had, after all, a classic simplicity. Two women and one man. He had seen something not unlike it before. And he smiled as he remembered how Miss Blinkett once supplied him unasked with sundry details of the affiancement of her cousin the Archdeacon with the Bishop's sister, and her anxious injunction when all was divulged that he must not on any account put it into a book. That promise he had kept without difficulty, but not in Miss Blinkett's eyes, who, when his next novel appeared, immediately traced a marked resemblance between the ardent love-making of the half-Italian hero and the gratified comments of the Archdeacon while allowing himself to be towed into harbour by the blameless blandishments of the Bishop's sister.