“I have often thought of it,” said Gussy, “and wondered if you were coming to say you could not come to dinner. You had clients who stopped you several times before.” He gave her a glance and laughed, but Gussy was quite unsuspicious, and instanced the clients in perfect good faith. “Poor clients!” he said; “they have been left to themselves for a long time, but they don’t seem to have been clamoring for me. I don’t think it could be that.” “Perhaps you were going to call somewhere in the neighborhood,” suggested Mrs. Harwood. “I don’t think it could be that either--I don’t make many calls, and none about here. Try again. I must find it out.” Janet on this occasion was seated full in view. She had not been able to change her position, as she generally did when he was brought in. She did not look up or take any notice. But Janet was aware that her head was bent stiffly, not naturally, over her work, and that in her whole appearance there must be the rigor of an artificial pose. Her head was bent lower than it need to have been; her needle stumbled in her work, pricking her fingers; and her downcast face, in spite of her, was covered with a hot and angry flush. And he could see her, plainly, distinctly, near him as she had not allowed herself to be since before “the accident” had occurred. He did not take any notice for a little time, being apparently much engaged with his own thoughts; but presently he looked up, and caught the expression of both form and face as she sat in the full light of the window. Oh, that it should have so happened to-day, instead of on any of the preceding days in which it would have been of no consequence! Janet, through her drooping eyelashes, saw--as she could have seen, somehow, had he been behind her--a slight start and awakening in his face: and then he put up his hand to support his head, and fixed his eyes upon her under that shield. “You are tired, Charley!” she heard Miss Harwood saying. “No, no; not tired a bit, only thinking.” His thinking was done with his eyes fixed on Janet, reading (she was sure) the dreadful consciousness which she felt to be in her. She waited, trembling, for his next words. “I think,” he said, “a light begins to dawn upon me. I had been at Mimpriss’s, the library; I suppose on my usual quest for music.” Janet did not know what might come next. She had seen various glances directed towards her which made her think he would not spare her. She had made it a principle to forestall everything that could be said about herself. “Oh, yes,” she said, hastily, “now I remember! I saw Mr. Meredith there.” “You never said so before, Janet.” “I think I must have said so, the first evening. Since then nobody has thought of such details.” He looked at her doubtfully, with some vagueness.