Thus it will be seen that Mrs. Leigh’s long experience was after all good for something. She divined the character of the dreadful obstacle which had come in her son’s way and shattered all his hopes. If he had recounted to her that incident which it would have seemed ostentation to him to refer to, probably she would have pierced the _imbroglio_ at once--or could she have seen into his life and his memory, she would, no doubt, have put her finger at once on that place. But there they stood, two human creatures in the closest relation to each other that nature can make, anxious to find out between them the key to a puzzle which neither of them could divine, but the secret of which lay certainly between them, could they but find it--and could make out nothing. A word from the son might have set the keen-witted mother, better acquainted than he with the manner in which scandals arise, on the scent. But it never occurred to him to say that word. They looked into each other’s faces and made out nothing. Strange veil of individuality which is between two human creatures, as the sea is between two worlds, and more confusing, more impenetrable still than any distance! Aubrey made the most conscientious efforts to lay bare his heart, to discover something that might be twisted, as she said; but he found nothing. His thoughts since he met the Kingswards first had been full of nothing but Bee--his very dreams had been full of her. He wandered vaguely through his own recollections, not knowing what to look for--what was there? There was nothing. His mother sat by, and, notwithstanding her anxiety, could scarcely refrain from smiling at his puzzled, troubled endeavour to find out something against himself. But there was nothing to find out. He shook his head at last, with a sort of appeal to her out of his troubled eyes. He was distressed not to find what he sought. “I know nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “One never does anything very good indeed--but not very bad either. I have just been as I always am--not much to brag of--but nothing to be ashamed of, between one man and another.” “The question is between one man and one woman, Aubrey, which is different.” “Then,” he cried, with a short laugh, “I defy discovery. There has been nothing in all my thoughts that need have been hidden. You do me grievous wrong, mother, if you can think--even if I had been inclined that way.” “I don’t think. I have the most complete faith in you, Aubrey. I say--anything that could be twisted by a malign interpretation?” He shook his head again. “And who would take the trouble to make a malign interpretation? I assure you, I have no enemy.” “Colonel Kingsward is enemy enough.” “Ah! Colonel Kingsward. I have no reason, however, to think that he would do a dishonourable action.” “What do you call intercepting letters, Aubrey?”