Harcourt Lowther came very frequently to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s drawing-rooms, now that she was to be found always accompanied by her darling Julia, and entirely unembarrassed by his visits. He did not always come at the orthodox hour, but would make his appearance between eleven and twelve o’clock on a hopelessly rainy morning, with a new book, or a roll of music, or something delightfully hideous in the way of jelly-fish for Maude’s aquarium, or the last fashion in ferns or orchids for Maude’s conservatories; and the back of Mrs. Tredethlyn’s house broke out into ferneries and conservatories wherever the ingenuity of a fashionable builder could find an excuse for carrying out Mrs. Tredethlyn’s graceful ideas, and swelling Mr. Tredethlyn’s little account. Mr. Lowther had contrived to make himself the friend of the house, so there was always some very plausible excuse for visits at unorthodox hours, and pleasant dawdling in Maude’s pretty morning-room; and Stuccoville, furtively observant behind rose-coloured curtains in opposite houses, took note of Mr. Lowther’s morning calls, and kept a sharp account of the period that elapsed between his entrances and exits; and all this time nothing could be more delicately deferential, more tenderly respectful, than Harcourt Lowther’s manner to his friend’s wife. By not one hazardous phrase, by not so much as a furtive glance, a half-suppressed sigh, had he awakened Maude to a perception of possible danger in this pleasant intimacy with a man who had once been her affianced husband. No poisonous breath from the schemer’s false lips had tarnished the purity of this bright young soul; but Stuccoville had taken alarm already, and--in confidential converse in cosy comers of ottomans, under the shadow of a tall vase of exotics, or a Parian statuette--declared Mrs. Tredethlyn’s conduct to be “Positively appalling, my dear; and that absurd west-country dolt of a husband continues as blind as ever; and now she has taken a companion, my love. You remember the companion in ‘Vanity Fair;’ that delightful Becky calls her a sheep-dog; and you recollect Madame de Marneffe’s companion in that horrible novel of Balzac’s, which my tiresome Georgiana found the other morning at the bottom of a cupboard, in which her brother Charles keeps his cricketing shoes and fishing-tackle, and was discovered by the governess sitting on the ground positively devouring the book, and when questioned said it was ‘Télémaque;’ but as I was about to tell you, my dear, with regard to Mrs. T---- and Mr. H. L----!” and so the little mole-hill gathered size, and gradually grew into a mountain.