"You're lovely," he said, under cover of Mrs. Morton's manipulation of the tea things. She gave her emphatic half-shake of the head. She knew the wind had nipped her, that her hair fell in wisps about her face, and his loving blindness made her disloyalty the blacker. She would not be disloyal, but she questioned her love for him, she faced the possibility of resigning him, and at once she had an impulse to thrust herself into his arms. Instead, she put her hand in his and held it fast, and, like a gentle tide, she felt the return of tenderness. Alone in the pretty room prepared for her, and still with that determined loyalty upon her, she made to throw Alexander's letter in the fire; yet to do that, she argued, was to admit its power, and it had no power for anything but a disturbance that would pass. It came too late. A little while ago--she did not follow the thought, but she knew its path. She shut her eyes to it. She loved Basil. She could not picture life without him. After herself she belonged to him. She was proud to be his. He was good, and true, and for all her self-esteem she wondered how he came to love her. After dinner, as they all sat in the drawing-room Theresa gazed at Mrs. Morton in a kind of wonder. She sat in her chair, crotcheting slowly, with frequent reference to an instruction book, and counting her stitches half aloud between her amiable sentences. In uttering commonplaces, she had a dignity which forced the listener to reach deeply or loftily for truth, and return from that vain pilgrimage with a sensation of having been robbed by the wayside. When she announced that their nearest neighbours, the Warings, were to have tea with them on the following day, Theresa waited anxiously for the something more implied in those pregnant tones. But Mrs. Morton serenely counted stitches. At length, "You will like the Warings," she said. Theresa stared into the fire. She was prepared to hate anyone thus introduced. She was not far from hating Mrs. Morton. Her lips tightened, her idle hands pressed each other closely. Had this placid person ever been in love? Was she so obtuse that she could not feel the fret of Theresa's spirit? Did she not know that solitude is the great need of lovers, or realize that Basil had not yet so much as kissed her? The presence of the groom had prevented confidences on the drive, and in the house Mrs. Morton had shadowed her in excess of welcome. She looked at Basil, who was looking at her, and raised her eyebrows wearily. He raised his own, and they smiled in the delightful comradeship of annoyance shared. She wanted to talk to him, to make amends for the wickedness of her thoughts, and here they sat, all three, and her tongue was tied. She longed to tear the crotchet from Mrs. Morton's plump white hands; she felt the old anger of her childhood rising to her throat, and she pressed her hand to it and forced it back.