The other two crossed the room to us at that, and Judy gaily made Somers over to his mother, trailing off to find Robert in the billiard-room. ‘Well, what has Mrs. Harbottle been telling you?’ Anna asked him. The young man’s eye followed Judy, his hand went musingly to his moustache. ‘She was telling me,’ he said, ‘that people in India were sepulchers of themselves, but that now and then one came who could roll away another’s stone.’ ‘It sounds promising,’ said Lady Chichele to me. ‘It sounds cryptic,’ I laughed to Somers, but I saw that he had the key. I can not say that I attended diligently to Mr. Chichele’s socks, but the part corresponding was freely assigned me. After his people went I saw him often. He pretended to find qualities in my tea, implied that he found them in my talk. As a matter of fact it was my inquiring attitude that he loved, the knowledge that there was no detail that he could give me about himself, his impressions and experiences, that was unlikely to interest me. I would not for the world imply that he was egotistical or complacent, absolutely the reverse, but he possessed an articulate soul which found its happiness in expression, and I liked to listen. I feel that these are complicated words to explain a very simple relation, and I pause to wonder what is left to me if I wished to describe his commerce with Mrs. Harbottle. Luckily there is an alternative; one needn’t do it. I wish I had somewhere on paper Judy’s own account of it at this period, however. It is a thing she would have enjoyed writing and more enjoyed communicating, at this period. There was a grave reticence in his talk about her which amused me in the beginning. Mrs. Harbottle had been for ten years important enough to us all, but her serious significance, the light and the beauty in her, had plainly been reserved for the discovery of this sensitive and intelligent person not very long from Sandhurst and exactly twenty-six. I was barely allowed a familiar reference, and anything approaching a flippancy was met with penetrating silence. I was almost rebuked for lightly suggesting that she must occasionally find herself bored in Peshawur. ‘I think not anywhere,’ said Mr. Chichele; ‘Mrs. Harbottle is one of the few people who sound the privilege of living.’ This to me, who had counted Mrs. Harbottle’s yawns on so many occasions! It became presently necessary to be careful, tactful, in one’s implications about Mrs. Harbottle, and to recognize a certain distinction in the fact that one was the only person with whom Mr. Chichele discussed her at all.