He smote upon his thigh in disgust with himself. “If I had only thought of that! Indeed I did think of it; but I thought--in short I got out of heart a little with the whole concern. I thought--I would keep you from disappointment as long as I could; keep you from seeing what they are; what little, common, foolish--Evelyn, I have had a terrible disappointment, a hideous sort of undeception. It is all my own fault--that I should have been such a heartless fool as to leave them there all these years!” Evelyn got up to support him in this sudden break-down. She put her arm round the big shoulders, which it would not half encircle. “James, dear James! what nonsense you are talking. Your children and your Mary’s--no, no, my good man! you are excited; you are over-anxious; you have judged the poor dear children too hardly. Shall we stay another week and have them down here, and set the clothes to rights? Fancy you, of all people in the world, being so much influenced by a question of clothes!” “If it were only that!” he said, holding her close to him, almost weeping on her shoulder. It was safer not to investigate what it was that made the strong man’s eyes so wet and sore. Evelyn did not attempt any such prying, but let him hide himself--he so much stronger than she was--in her soft hold, and swallow the sob that was in his capacious heart. No one ever guessed but in that moment, what it was to James Rowland to have lost his ideal children, the little things with all their sweetness whom he remembered, and to have found the common-place young man and woman whom he now knew. Evelyn’s tender sympathy, compassion, and presently the tremulous laugh with which she began to jest and tease him about his devotion to externals, his fancy for fine clothes, brought him at last to himself. He was a little ashamed to feel his eyes red, to know that he must look almost like a woman who had been crying when he raised his head to the light. But all that Evelyn did to betray her knowledge was a little kiss upon his eyes, which she gave him heartily, as if in spite of herself. And then they sat down to consider the question, which was decided at last in favour of “going home,” as Evelyn called it, there to take such steps for a complete renewal of Marion’s wardrobe as her taste and knowledge would suggest. It was easy to talk of the clothes, to which she had playfully directed the conversation--too serious and too emotional to be otherwise discussed: but both of them were very well aware that a great deal more was meant. It was some time after that, when the gravity of the situation had been dissipated, and lighter thoughts and talk came in, that he asked her with a little shamefacedness, whether she had gone through that ceremonial to which Rosamond Saumarez had referred. “I suppose you have been--presented, as they call it,” he said with a laugh.