What was virtually supreme would be her vision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to mislead her--which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had designed.

It was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course.

The billiard-room was NOT, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to retire to--and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his visitor wouldn't, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene.

Should she frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but he was, after an instant, not afraid of that.

Wouldn't she rather, as emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic ?--show at least that they needn't mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand.