There could be no possible doubt about the boredom. Mrs. Nevill Tyson

turned from reading to talking with obvious relief. Their conversation

had taken a wider range lately; it was more intimate, and at the same

time less embarrassing. He wondered how often she thought of that scene

in the library at Thorneytoft; she had behaved ever since as if it had

never happened. For one thing Stanistreet was thankful--she had left off

discussing Nevill with him. If she had ever been in ignorance, she now

knew all that it concerned her to know. Not that she avoided the subject;

on the contrary, it seemed to have floated into the vague region of

general interest, where any chance current of thought might drift them to

it. Stanistreet dreaded it; but she was continually brushing up against

it, with a feathery lightness which made him marvel at the volatile

character of her mind. Was it the clumsiness of a butterfly or the

dexterity of a woman? Once or twice he thought he detected a certain

reluctant shyness in approaching the subject directly. It was as if she

regarded her affection for her husband as a youthful folly, and her

marriage as a discreditable episode of which she was now ashamed.

On the other hand, she was always ready to talk about Stanistreet and

his doings. She would listen for hours to his mess-room stories, his

descriptions of the people and the places he had seen, the engagements

he had taken part in. For a whole evening one Sunday they had talked

about nothing but fortification. Now it was impossible that Mrs. Nevill

Tyson could be interested in fortification. As for Vedic philosophy, she

cared for Brahma about as much as Stanistreet did for Brahms.

He was walking with her in Hyde Park; they had turned off into the

path by the flower-beds on the Park Lane side. It was April, between

six and seven in the evening, and, except for a few stragglers, they

had the walk to themselves. Louis had been giving her the history of

his first campaign in the Soudan, and she was listening with a dreamy,

half-suppressed interest, which rose gradually to excitement. He sat down

and drew on the gravel with the point of his walking-stick a rude map of

the country, showing the course of the Nile and the line of march, with

pebbles for stations, and bare patches for battlefields. He then began to

trace out an extremely complicated plan of the campaign. She followed the

movements of the walking-stick with an intelligence which he would

hardly have credited her with. And, indeed, it was no inconsiderable

feat, seeing that for want of a finer instrument Louis's plan was

hopelessly mixed up with his line of march and other matters.

"Was Nevill there?" she asked, casually, at the close of a spirited

account of his last engagement.




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