"Thank you. It's only a matter of time, as I gather. But a bad job for him till he gets his sight again." "He will, I suppose, in the end?" "Oh yes--in the end. Sir Coupland is cautious, of course. But I don't fancy he's really uneasy. His sight might come back suddenly, he said, at any moment. Of course, _he_ believes his eyesight will come back. Only meanwhile he wants--it was a phrase of his own--to keep all the excruciation for his own private enjoyment. That's what he said!" "I see. Of course, that makes a difference. And you think Sir Coupland thinks he will get all right again?" Mr. Pellew says he does think so, reassuringly. "It has always struck me as peculiar," says he, "that Tim's family ... I beg pardon--I should have said the Earl's. But you see I remember him as a kid--we are cousins, you know--and his sisters always called him Tim.... Well, I mean the family here, you know, seem to know so little of the Torrenses. Lady Gwen doesn't seem to have recognised this chap in the Park." "I believe she has never seen him. He has been a great deal abroad, you know." "Yes, he's been at German Universities, and games of that sort." "Is that your third cigar, Mr. Pellew?" "No--second. Come, I say, Miss Dickenson, two's not much...." But her remark was less a tobacco-crusade than a protest against too abrupt a production of family history by a family friend. Mr. Pellew felt confident it would come, though; and it did, at about the third whiff of the new cigar. "I suppose you know the story?" "Couldn't say, without hearing it first to know." "About Philippa and Sir Hamilton Torrens?" "Can't say I have. But then I'm the sort of fellah nobody ever tells things to." "I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it." "I shall not tell anyone you did so. You may rely on that." Mr. Pellew gave his cigar a half-holiday to say this seriously, and Miss Dickenson felt that his type, though too tailor-made, was always to be relied on; you had only to scratch it to find a Gentleman underneath. No audience ever fails to applaud the discovery on the stage. Evidently there was no reserve needed--a relation of the Earl, too! Still, she felt satisfied at this passing recognition of Prudence on her part. Preliminaries had been done justice to.