Regarding Randolph, she felt a certain disquiet He had not betrayed himself by so much as a glance, but her woman’s instinct told her that he still loved her. There was nothing to apprehend, however, beyond a possible scene at a remote period. If he was playing a big game it was for heavy stakes, and he would not show his cards for many a day. It was more than possible that he hoped everything from a return to the scene of her girlish freedom and triumphs, and from her withdrawal from her husband’s influence; but he would watch and wait for the crucial moment before suggesting the facile American specific for matrimonial jars. He was very clever, and she did not doubt that if he were playing for the supreme desire of his life he would be sufficiently unscrupulous. But he was a gentleman and he would not demand her hand as the price of the Abbey’s rescue. If she had never met Cecil Maundrell she believed that she could have loved him, for he understood her. He was, now that he had found himself, a charming and companionable man, with no raw edges to irritate the most sensitive romanticism; and her Individuality would have flourished like a green bay-tree. And he had plenty of brains and was just serious enough. She could never have given him the half of what she had given Cecil Maundrell, but there would have been no violent and humiliating reactions from too much high-thinking and attempting to realise a serious man’s ideal. Now, neither he nor any other man but her husband could satisfy her for a moment; but as she had no desire to do Randolph any more harm than she had done him already she determined to take Mary Gifford to California with her and give that odd and attractive young person all the advantages of propinquity and comparison. Emmy’s peccancy was but a final reason for her desire to separate herself for a time from her present life. She was charitable, but she was fastidious. Had Emmy been an outsider she might have had twenty lovers; but the proximity disgusted her. CHAPTER XVII Of course Cecil did the worst thing possible for himself: he appeared just as she had finished elaborating her case and before she had started upon the argument between her higher and her pettier self which she had dimly contemplated. As he ran up the stair she rose nervously to her feet, regretting for the first time that she had not a room of her own in which she could lock herself. They had continued to put up with the trifling inconveniences of the tower because its isolation and historic associations made it a tenacious symbol in their own romance. She sat down as he entered. “I just missed you,” he said anxiously, “and some one told me that you had not been in the drawing-room since dinner. Are you ill?” “No; and I am glad you have come up. I want to ask you something.” He sat down beside her and took her hand. “What is it?” he asked. “Something has gone wrong?” “I want to go back to California for a year.”