‘Ah, thank you for that! Now I’ll leave her alone as long as you think proper!’

He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. ‘Isabel,’ said her husband, ‘I bring you an old friend.’

Mrs Osmond’s face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend’s, not perfectly confident. ‘I’m very happy to see Lord Warburton,’ she said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick impression that Mrs Osmond wouldn’t notice what he did.

Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her, was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and attestation strictly sincere. He was ‘heavier’ than of yore and looked older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.

‘I suppose you didn’t expect to see me,’ he said; ‘I’ve but just arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I’ve lost no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays.’

‘You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,’ Osmond remarked to his wife.

‘It’s very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we’re greatly flattered,’ Isabel said.

‘Ah well, it’s better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,’ Osmond went on.

‘The hotel seems very good; I think it’s the same at which I saw you four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it’s a long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?’ his lordship asked of his hostess. ‘It was in the Capitol, in the first room.’

‘I remember that myself,’ said Osmond. ‘I was there at the time.’

‘Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome—so sorry that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I’ve never cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,’ her old friend went on to Isabel, ‘and I assure you I’ve often thought of you. It must be a charming place to live in,’ he added with a look, round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his old ruefulness.

‘We should have been glad to see you at any time,’ Osmond observed with propriety.

‘Thank you very much. I haven’t been out of England since then. Till a month ago I really supposed my travels over.’

‘I’ve heard of you from time to time,’ said Isabel, who had already, with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting him again meant for her.

‘I hope you’ve heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete blank.’

‘Like the good reigns in history,’ Osmond suggested. He appeared to think his duties as a host now terminated—he had performed them so conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife’s old friend. It was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural—a deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. ‘I’ll leave you and Mrs Osmond together,’ he added. ‘You have reminiscences into which I don’t enter.’