Darnley looked at him gravely. “No bad news, I hope?” he said.

Wolf was silent. All manner of queer fancies passed, like the shadows of rooks over a pond, across the surface of his brain. One thing particularly he found himself dwelling upon. “Didn’t seem friendly to me, eh?” And he recalled the only two occasions on which he had seen Christie alone since his marriage.

On both those occasions she had avoided all allusion to the day of the horse-show. But she had been self-possessed and natural, had laughed at his jests, had talked freely with him about Mattie, had not even drawn back from a passing reference to Olwen. And though her allusions to Gerda were faint and slight, they were friendly and sympathetic. But Wolf remembered well how he had experienced a profound astonishment at the abysses of pride and reserve into which this frail being had the power of retreating.