“Yes, but not quite in the same sweet way.” “Ah ha! It’s the pictures and the music and the sermons you’ve taken me to beginning to have an effect at last,” she said, not flippantly, for though she laughed her eyes began to glisten. George was touched, but greatly puzzled. “Have you heard anything from Sundran since she left?” asked he carelessly, after allowing an interval to elapse so that the question might appear to have no connection with what had gone before. “No,” said Nouna; then, after a pause, she looked up at her husband mysteriously. “Do you know what I think?” “Well!” “I believe she has managed, how I don’t know, to find her way back to mamma. I’ve been thinking it over a great deal, and I fancy when she found out the Colonel,”--(she lowered her voice)--“she thought she ought to let mamma know where to find him.” And Nouna finished with a slow emphatic nod of her small head. “That’s a very clever suggestion,” said George, who indeed had reason to think so. He felt relieved, for Nouna’s want of candour had never gone the length of deliberately planned deceit, and he decided upon the strength of this short dialogue that she had heard nothing. The real reason of his wife’s altered conduct was not likely to occur to him. Coming of a race which places the one sex in such complete subjection to the other that confidence between them is impossible, she possessed, together with that cautious over-reticence which is the weapon of the weak, its correlative virtue--a delicate tact which avoided a sensitive place discreetly, and made no attempt to lay bare a wound which her lord wished to conceal. Something had happened to make George unhappy--this kind husband who had cherished her so tenderly, who had denied her no proof of his affection. Her woman’s heart was deeply touched; if she had any curiosity it could wait for its satisfaction until by and by when he was better; in the meantime she would be loyally good to him, even to the extent of checking her secret sobs over the parting with the plants and perfumes and knick-knacks which had grown into her frivolity-loving heart. George got the bank appointment, through the efforts of Lord Florencecourt, who told him he had had a close race with a connection of the man who was to be manager of the Paris branch. “He’s a disagreeable man, the manager, Mr. Gurton,” said the Colonel. “I hope you’ll get on all right with him. The young fellow he wanted to get in is a lad he calls his nephew, but by all accounts he is what nephews have a trick of turning out to be. Gurton is rather savage over the disappointment; fortunately I was able to prove that the lad is not so steady as he might be.” “Thank you, Colonel. It’s very good of you to take so much trouble. I’m sorry about the mysterious nephew. Unless he’s an exceptionally just man, it will make him so ready to find fault with me. And of course I’m quite raw to the work.”