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There was still a chance, had he been emotionally nimble enough to say something humorous about the visit, something gently satiric about Mrs. Windrom’s exaggerated fear of missing connections with the stage from the Valley to Witney, something natural and relaxed and sympathetic,—if only her old nickname, “Weedgie,”—to reinstate her in the position to which, as his most intimate, she felt entitled.

A great deal, she felt, depended on what his tone would be. She held herself taut, dreading an echo of the hollow courtesies that had filled her rooms for days with such forbidding graciousness.

Keble had a congenital aversion to demonstrations. Tenderness might coax him far, but it would never induce him to “slop over.” As he went to the table for his pipe, his eyes encountered an alien object which he lifted thankfully, for it served as a cue.

“Hello, Mrs. Windrom left her pince-nez behind ... I’ll have them put into the mail for Sweet to take out this afternoon. Hadn’t you better write a note to go with them, my dear?”