CHAPTER VII.
I don't remember how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling; his sittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time he gave me one.
"Has any rumour ever reached you of Miss Saunt's having anything the matter with her eyes ?" He stared with a candour that was a sufficient answer to my question, backing it up with a shocked and mystified "Never!" Then I asked him if he had observed in her any symptom, however disguised, of embarrassed sight; on which, after a moment's thought, he exclaimed "Disguised ?" as if my use of that word had vaguely awakened a train.

"She's not a bit myopic," he said; "she doesn't blink or contract her lids." I fully recognised this and I mentioned that she altogether denied the impeachment; owing it to him moreover to explain the ground of my inquiry, I gave him a sketch of the incident that had taken place before me at the shop.

He knew all about Lord Iffield; that nobleman had figured freely in our conversation as his preferred, his injurious rival.
Poor Dawling's contention was that if there had been a definite engagement between his lordship and the young lady, the sort of thing that was announced in the Morning Post, renunciation and retirement would be comparatively easy to him; but that having waited in vain for any such assurance he was entitled to act as if the door were not really closed or were at any rate not cruelly locked.

He was naturally much struck with my anecdote and still more with my interpretation of it.
"There _is_ something, there _is_ something--possibly something very grave, certainly something that requires she should make use of artificial aids.

She won't admit it publicly, because with her idolatry of her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aids nothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement.