All of which things made Charles Meredith pause; but after a week or so he began to feel that his hesitation, if too prolonged, would in its way produce a decision which he desired as little as the other. And then he remembered that Dolff was at home, which would always make a diversion and stave off explanations. These deliberations have seemed to occupy a long period; yet it was not, after all, a very long period. About ten days after the concert, the door being open to admit of the exit of Dolff, who, in all the glories of evening costume, was stepping forth towards a waiting hansom, ready to convey him to some evening festivity, Charles Meredith slipped in unheard, with his usual little roll of music, but less than his usual confidence and calm. He was met in the hall by Julia, who had come out to superintend her brother’s departure, and whose pleasure in Dolff’s entertainment and finery was brought to a sudden pause by the apparition of a figure less beloved. She gave vent, having no watch upon her, to that sound which had died from her lips, or rather from her teeth, for so long, but with which she had been wont to welcome Meredith. “Oh!” or rather “S--s!” said Julia, “so this is you--again----” “Yes, my dear child, it is I--again,” he replied, with a mocking bow and smile. CHAPTER XIX. Meredith paused at the door inspecting the quiet interior thus thrown open to him--in which he was not looked for, and where, accordingly, his arrival remained unobserved--the doors being all open still for the exit of Dolff. It startled him a little to find in how like its ordinary condition everything was, and how little sign of the absence of a habitual visitor was about the place. There were a hundred signs of Dolff, but even the place near Gussy usually though tacitly reserved for himself was filled up, and Gussy sat at the eternal woman’s work which, in some circumstances, is so exasperating to a man, as composed as if he had never crossed her horizon. They were all at it, Mrs. Harwood with her crewels, Janet with something else. He wondered, half-angrily, if they would go on forever with their heads bowed over that infernal sewing whatever might happen, even that quick little thing, that creature born under more variable skies, the governess. She, however, was the first to find him out. A consciousness of some new element in the warm atmosphere, something that had not been there a minute before, moved Janet. She looked up and uttered a faint exclamation.