A Laodicean

'Ah indeed!' he exclaimed as he looked up to her face. 'I had not a notion that it was you!' He went over and shook hands with Charlotte De Stancy.

'I am not going far,' she said; 'only to the next station. We often run down in summer time. Are you going far?'

'I am going to a building further on; thence to Normandy by way of Cherbourg, to finish out my holiday.'

Miss De Stancy thought that would be very nice.

'Well, I hope so. But I fear it won't.'

After saying that Somerset asked himself why he should mince matters with so genuine and sympathetic a girl as Charlotte De Stancy? She could tell him particulars which he burned to know. He might never again have an opportunity of knowing them, since she and he would probably not meet for years to come, if at all.

'Have the castle works progressed pretty rapidly under the new architect?' he accordingly asked.

'Yes,' said Charlotte in her haste--then adding that she was not quite sure if they had progressed so rapidly as before; blushingly correcting herself at this point and that, in the tinkering manner of a nervous organization aiming at nicety where it was not required.

'Well, I should have liked to carry out the undertaking to its end,' said Somerset. 'But I felt I could not consistently do so. Miss Power--' (here a lump came into Somerset's throat--so responsive was he yet to her image)--'seemed to have lost confidence in me, and--it was best that the connection should be severed.'

There was a long pause. 'She was very sorry about it,' said Charlotte gently.

'What made her alter so?--I never can think!'

Charlotte waited again as if to accumulate the necessary force for honest speaking at the expense of pleasantness. 'It was the telegram that began it of course,' she answered.

'Telegram?'

She looked up at him in quite a frightened way--little as there was to be frightened at in a quiet fellow like him in this sad time of his life--and said, 'Yes: some telegram--I think--when you were in trouble? Forgive my alluding to it; but you asked me the question.'

Somerset began reflecting on what messages he had sent Paula, troublous or otherwise. All he had sent had been sent from the castle, and were as gentle and mellifluous as sentences well could be which had neither articles nor pronouns. 'I don't understand,' he said. 'Will you explain a little more--as plainly as you like--without minding my feelings?'