Nevertheless it frightened the gentleman into modifying what he meant to say next, which was:--"May I call on you there?" He gave it up, as too warm on the whole, considering the context, and said instead:--"I could leave your book." Something depended on the lady's answer to this. So she paused, and worded it:--"By all means bring it, if you prefer doing so," instead of:--"You needn't take any trouble about returning the book." Only the closest analysis can be even with the contingencies of some stages in the relativities of grown-ups, however easily one sees through the common human girl and boy. Miss Dickenson's selected answer just saved the situation by the skin of its teeth. For there certainly was a situation of a sort. Nobody was falling in love with anybody, that saw itself; but for all that a fatality dictated that Mr. Pellew and Aunt Constance were in each other's pockets more often than not. Neither had any wish to come out, and popular observation supplied the language the story has borrowed to describe the fact. The occupant of Mr. Pellew's pocket was, however, dissatisfied with her answer about the book. Her tenancy might easily become precarious. She felt that the maintenance of Cavendish Square, as a subject of conversation, would soften asperities and dispel misunderstandings, if any. So, instead of truncating the subject of the book-return, she interwove it with the interesting mansion of Sister Nora's family, referring especially to the causes of her own visit to it. "Gwen and Cousin Clo, as she calls her, very kindly asked me to go there if I came to London; and I suppose I shall, if my sister Georgie and her husband are not at Roehampton. Anyway, even if I am not there, I am sure they will be delighted to see you.... Oh no!--Roehampton's much too far to come with it, and I can easily call for it." This was most ingenious, for it requested Mr. Pellew to make his call a definite visit, while depersonalising that visit by a hint at her own possible absence. This uncertainty also gave latitude of speech, her hypothetical presence warranting an attitude which would almost have implied too warm a welcome from a certainty. She even could go so far as to add:--"However, I should like to show you the Prince's drawing-room--they call it so because he got drunk there; it's such an honour, you see!--so I hope I shall be there." "Doosid int'ristin'--shall certainly come! Gwen's to go to London to get poor Torrens out of her head--that's the game, isn't it?" "That sort of thing, I believe. Change of scene and so on." Miss Dickenson spoke as one saturated with experience of refractory lovers, not without a suggestion of having in her youth played a leading part in some such drama. "Well--I'm on his side. P'r'aps that's not the right way to put it; I suppose I ought to say _their_ side. Meaning, the young people's, of course! Yes, exactly."