How do you do, Mrs.Walton?
Lady Brandon will be SO glad to see you.

Good-evening, Mr.Fitzgeorge." Jane sprang up, wiped her eyes, and, with her hands on her hair, smoothing it, rushed to a mirror.

No visitors appearing, she perceived that she was, for perhaps the hundredth time in her life, the victim of an imposture devised by Agatha.

She, gratified by the success of her attempt to regain her old ascendancy over Jane--she had made it with misgiving, notwithstanding her apparent confidence--went downstairs to the library, where she found Sir Charles gloomily trying to drown his domestic troubles in art criticism.
"I thought you were in the billiard room," said Agatha.
"I only peeped in," he replied; "but as I saw something particular going on, I thought it best to slip away, and I have been alone ever since." The something particular which Sir Charles had not wished to interrupt was only a game of billiards.
It was the first opportunity Erskine had ever enjoyed of speaking to Gertrude at leisure and alone.

Yet their conversation had never been so commonplace.