Kendal had for women the readiest consideration, and though one of the odd things he found in Elfrida was the slight degree to which she evoked it in him, he recoiled instinctively from any reasoned action which would distress her.

But his sense of her inconsistency with British institutions -- at least he fancied it was that--led him to discourage somewhat, in the lightest way, Miss Halifax's interested inquiries about her.

The inquiries suggested dimly that eccentricity and obscurity might be overlooked in any one whose personality really had a value for Mr.Kendal, and made an attempt, which was heroic considering the delicacy of Miss Halifax's scruples, to measure his appreciation of Miss Bell as a writer--to Miss Halifax the word wore a halo--and as an individual.

If she did not succeed it was partly because he had not himself quite decided whether Elfrida, in London, was delightful or intolerable, and partly because he had no desire to be complicated in social relations which, he told himself, must be either ludicrous or insincere.

The Halifaxes were not in any sense literary; their proper pretensions to that sort of society were buried with Sir William, who had been editor of the _Brown Quarterly_ in his day, and many other things.