Chapter 12

Mrs. Saltram left me drawing my breath more quickly and indeed
almost in pain--as if I had just perilously grazed the loss of
something precious. I didn't quite know what it was--it had a
shocking resemblance to my honour. The emotion was the livelier
surely in that my pulses even yet vibrated to the pleasure with
which, the night before, I had rallied to the rare analyst, the
great intellectual adventurer and pathfinder. What had dropped
from me like a cumbersome garment as Saltram appeared before me in
the afternoon on the heath was the disposition to haggle over his
value. Hang it, one had to choose, one had to put that value
somewhere; so I would put it really high and have done with it.
Mrs. Mulville drove in for him at a discreet hour--the earliest she
could suppose him to have got up; and I learned that Miss Anvoy
would also have come had she not been expecting a visit from Mr.
Gravener. I was perfectly mindful that I was under bonds to see
this young lady, and also that I had a letter to hand to her; but I
took my time, I waited from day to day. I left Mrs. Saltram to
deal as her apprehensions should prompt with the Pudneys. I knew
at last what I meant--I had ceased to wince at my responsibility.
I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would;
but it didn't fade, and, individually, it hasn't faded even now.
During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again,
Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why
I WAS so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener
"with" them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement
had set in between Mr. Gravener and her sweet young friend--a state
of things but half satisfactory to her so long as the advantage
resulting to Mr. Saltram failed to disengage itself from the merely
nebulous state. She intimated that her sweet young friend was, if
anything, a trifle too reserved; she also intimated that there
might now be an opening for another clever young man. There never
was the slightest opening, I may here parenthesise, and of course
the question can't come up to-day. These are old frustrations now.
Ruth Anvoy hasn't married, I hear, and neither have I. During the
month, toward the end, I wrote to George Gravener to ask if, on a
special errand, I might come to see him, and his answer was to
knock the very next day at my door. I saw he had immediately
connected my enquiry with the talk we had had in the railway-
carriage, and his promptitude showed that the ashes of his
eagerness weren't yet cold. I told him there was something I felt
I ought in candour to let him know--I recognised the obligation his
friendly confidence had laid on me.

"You mean Miss Anvoy has talked to you? She has told