But she noticed that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging the cups let a spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped as if a bomb had gone off, and under his breath said to the man, "You clumsy fool!" Little as the incident was, she, knowing Michael's courtesy and politeness, found it significant, as bearing on the evidence of his tired face.

Then, next moment his mother said something to him, and instantly his love transformed and irradiated it.
To-day, more than ever before, Lady Ashbridge seemed to exist only through him.

As Sylvia knew, she had been for the last few weeks constantly disagreeable to him; but she wondered whether this exacting, meticulous affection was not harder to bear.

Yet Michael, in spite of the nervous strain which now showed itself so clearly, seemed to find no difficulty at all in responding to it.

It might have worn his nerves to tatters, but the tenderness and love of him passed unhampered through the frayed communications, for it was he himself who was brought into play.