As they hastened on through the drizzle in which the storm of the night was weeping itself out, Anna drew close under his umbrella, and at the pressure of her arm against his he recalled his walk up the Dover pier with Sophy Viner. The memory gave him a startled vision of the inevitable occasions of contact, confidence, familiarity, which his future relationship to the girl would entail, and the countless chances of betrayal that every one of them involved. “Do tell me just what you said,” he heard Anna pleading; and with sudden resolution he affirmed: “I quite understand your mother-in-law’s feeling as she does.” The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less significant than they had sounded to his inner ear; and Anna replied without surprise: “Of course. It’s inevitable that she should. But we shall bring her round in time.” Under the dripping dome she raised her face to his. “Don’t you remember what you said the day before yesterday? ‘Together we can’t fail to pull it off for him!’ I’ve told Owen that, so you’re pledged and there’s no going back.” The day before yesterday! Was it possible that, no longer ago, life had seemed a sufficiently simple business for a sane man to hazard such assurances? “Anna,” he questioned her abruptly, “why are you so anxious for this marriage?” She stopped short to face him. “Why? But surely I’ve explained to you--or rather I’ve hardly had to, you seemed so in sympathy with my reasons!” “I didn’t know, then, who it was that Owen wanted to marry.” The words were out with a spring and he felt a clearer air in his brain. But her logic hemmed him in. “You knew yesterday; and you assured me then that you hadn’t a word to say----” “Against Miss Viner?” The name, once uttered, sounded on and on in his ears. “Of course not. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that I think her a good match for Owen.” Anna made no immediate answer. When she spoke it was to question: “Why don’t you think her a good match for Owen?” “Well--Madame de Chantelle’s reasons seem to me not quite as negligible as you think.” “You mean the fact that she’s been Mrs. Murrett’s secretary, and that the people who employed her before were called Hoke? For, as far as Owen and I can make out, these are the gravest charges against her.” “Still, one can understand that the match is not what Madame de Chantelle had dreamed of.” “Oh, perfectly--if that’s all you mean.” The lodge was in sight, and she hastened her step. He strode on beside her in silence, but at the gate she checked him with the question: “Is it really all you mean?” “Of course,” he heard himself declare. “Oh, then I think I shall convince you--even if I can’t, like Madame de Chantelle, summon all the Everards to my aid!” She lifted to him the look of happy laughter that sometimes brushed her with a gleam of spring.