When the French’s Court party betook themselves to their bicycles for the homeward ride Mr. Glasgow came back from the hall door close to Slaney. She had stirred the logs till they blazed strongly, and the warm eager flicker met the unearthly stillness of the moonlight. “I couldn’t get away in time for church,” said Glasgow, as if dropping into an undercurrent of both their minds; “I had a terrible amount of work to get through. It isn’t finished now, but--I just let it remain unfinished.” He looked at her, to see in what manner she would show her gratification, and found her eyes cast down, and her sensitive mouth closed in an unsympathetic line. He had never known her other than sympathetic, with that quick brain sympathy that was especially hers; she had shown him without reserve or femininity that his conversation was agreeable to her, but her heart was hidden from him, perhaps from her own inability to reveal it. He felt, as his eyes dwelt on her, that she was complex and unexplored; he was pleasurably aware that she was attractive. “What have you been doing with yourself?” he went on, in his confident, quiet voice. “I thought you would have come down to the cutting yesterday to see how we are getting on.” “It was too cold,” said Slaney, indifferently; “besides, I went to French’s Court.” “It _was_ rather cold, especially when one waited and was disappointed,” said Glasgow. “I always looked upon you as a person who kept your promises.” “There is only one thing more irrational than making promises, and that is keeping them,” said Slaney, with a flippancy that Glasgow was not accustomed to in her; “but in this case there was no promise.” “When a thing has happened very often, one has a right to expect it to happen again,” he said; “that is how one arrives at most conclusions.” “Sometimes things come to a conclusion of themselves,” said Slaney, with a little laugh. She looked up and found his eyes waiting to meet hers. They had an undisguised, irrelevant tenderness, and Slaney was surprised into accepting it for one silent moment, while her heart beat and her head swam. She recovered herself, as one might struggle up out of soft ground. The thought of Lady Susan was like setting her feet again on hard rock. “Mrs. Quin was here to-day,” she said, catching at the first subject that suggested itself. “From what she tells me, I am afraid that Tom Quin must be going out of his mind.” “I should believe that if I thought he had any mind to go out of,” said Glasgow irritably. Slaney was not playing the part he had cast for her, and the subject of the Quins was not calculated to soothe him. “The whole family have persecuted me about that gravel-pit--Quin, and his mother, and the red-haired sister, and all. I wonder if they really think I am going to give up working the place to please them!”