Chapter 9

The thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George
Gravener was the way Saltram's name kept out of it. It seemed to
me at the time that we were quite pointedly silent about him; but
afterwards it appeared more probable there had been on my
companion's part no conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of
this, and for the best of reasons--the simple reason of my
perceiving more completely that, for evil as well as for good, he
said nothing to Gravener's imagination. That honest man didn't
fear him--he was too much disgusted with him. No more did I,
doubtless, and for very much the same reason. I treated my
friend's story as an absolute confidence; but when before
Christmas, by Mrs. Saltram, I was informed of Lady Coxon's death
without having had news of Miss Anvoy's return, I found myself
taking for granted we should hear no more of these nuptials, in
which, as obscurely unnatural, I now saw I had never TOO
disconcertedly believed. I began to ask myself how people who
suited each other so little could please each other so much. The
charm was some material charm, some afffinity, exquisite doubtless,
yet superficial some surrender to youth and beauty and passion, to
force and grace and fortune, happy accidents and easy contacts.
They might dote on each other's persons, but how could they know
each other's souls? How could they have the same prejudices, how
could they have the same horizon? Such questions, I confess,
seemed quenched but not answered when, one day in February, going
out to Wimbledon, I found our young lady in the house. A passion
that had brought her back across the wintry ocean was as much of a
passion as was needed. No impulse equally strong indeed had drawn
George Gravener to America; a circumstance on which, however, I
reflected only long enough to remind myself that it was none of my
business. Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the
difference was not simply that of her marks of mourning. Mrs.
Mulville told me soon enough what it was: it was the difference
between a handsome girl with large expectations and a handsome girl
with only four hundred a year. This explanation indeed didn't
wholly content me, not even when I learned that her mourning had a
double cause--learned that poor Mr. Anvoy, giving way altogether,
buried under the ruins of his fortune and leaving next to nothing,
had died a few weeks before.

"So she has come out to marry George Gravener?" I commented.
"Wouldn't it have been prettier of him to have saved her the
trouble?"

"Hasn't the House just met?" Adelaide replied. "And for Mr.
Gravener the House--!" Then she added: "I gather that her having
come is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little shaky. If it
were