"And I know what _you've_ heard." After a moment I added: "Had he peradventure caught a glimpse of the money in the table-drawers?" At this my companion honestly flushed. "How can you be so cruel when you know how little he calculates?" "Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me things that act on my nerves. I'm sure he hadn't caught a glimpse of anything but some splendid idea." Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. "And perhaps even of her beautiful listening face." "Perhaps, even! And what was it all about?" "His talk? It was _à propos_ of her engagement, which I had told him about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the profundity of it." It was impossible wholly to restrain one's mirth at this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my companion to admonish me. "It sounds a little stale, but you know his freshness." "Of illustration? Indeed I do!" "And how he has always been right on that great question." "On what great question, dear lady, hasn't he been right?" "Of what other great men can you equally say it? I mean that he has never, but _never_, had a deviation?" Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded. I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up. "Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?" I was reduced to inquiring instead. "Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting into the carriage." These words somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram's big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green landau. "She said she was not disappointed," Adelaide pursued. I meditated a moment. "Did he wear his shawl?" "His shawl?" She had not even noticed. "I mean yours." "He looked very nice, and you know he's always clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expression--she said his mind is like a crystal!" I pricked up my ears. "A crystal?" "Suspended in the moral world--swinging and shining and flashing there. She's monstrously clever, you know." I reflected again. "Monstrously!" VIII George Gravener didn't follow her, for late in September, after the House had risen, I met him in a railway-carriage. He was coming up from Scotland, and I had just quitted the abode of a relation who lived near Durham. The current of travel back to London was not yet strong; at any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it for some time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with the white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last sociably, conversed. I saw that things were not well with him, but I asked no question until something dropped by himself made an absence of curiosity almost rude. He mentioned that he was worried about his good old friend Lady Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clockborough, much on his mind and on his hands.