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‘Oh, you call her a girl now!’ Mrs. Hayward said, with that air of resentment which he did not understand. He paused and looked at her with sudden anxiety.

‘You are not feeling poorly, Elizabeth? You are not over-tired? You are not——?’ He could not say angry, it seemed ridiculous; but his attention was roused, and nothing but her health could be the cause, he thought, of her change of tone.

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘go on. I am not feeling anything—but a wish to know what you mean.’

There was a difference in her for all that. And if Elizabeth was going to fail him, what would become of him? He gave her a serious, anxious, inquiring look. Then, in reply to an impatient movement on her part, continued—

‘That’s not all. I went and asked Mrs. Bellendean who she was—though I had scarcely breath to ask. Elizabeth—conceive what I felt when she turned round and called Joyce!’

‘Joyce!—well I suppose you did not expect she had changed her name?’ She said this sharply; then added, with an evident effort, ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t wonder you were upset. Joyce—and it is a name one never hears. Did she—know you?’