"She certainly doesn't attempt to encourage Lumley in any way," the Earl continued thoughtfully.
"Her manners and behavior, in fact, her whole conduct, is perfectly irreproachable," Lady St. Maurice acknowledged. "In certain ways she has been a great disappointment to me, but I wish to be just to her, and I feel bound to say so. It makes the situation all the more difficult."
"In that case we can do nothing," her husband said decidedly. "Things must take their course. If they develop, as we will hope they may not, I will speak to Lumley privately."
"You see she is coming back because Lumley has joined them," Lady St. Maurice said. "Geoffrey, look at her now at the top of that hill. Does she not remind you of him?"
He took up a pair of field glasses from the table and looked at her steadily.
"Yes, she does," he admitted. "She is just like that poor fellow Marioni sometimes. I never noticed it so clearly."
"She is horribly like him, and, Geoffrey, it is foolish of me, but sometimes she looks at me with his eyes. It makes me shiver."
"Foolish little woman! Why, you are actually nursing your fears."
"They are scarcely fears; only a stupid sort of foreboding that comes on sometimes, and which, afterward, I look upon as morbid. It is foolish of me, I know, to connect them with Margharita, and yet I can't help it sometimes. She is so like him."
"Why don't you ask her if she knows anything about him, or where he is? Surely you might do that."