"Do you imagine something has happened to him?"
"Yes, always. Of course I'm used to it."
"Do you mean his tumbling over precipices—that sort of thing?"
"I don't know exactly what it is; it's the general sense that he'll never come back."
She said so much and kept back so much that the only way to treat the condition she referred to seemed the jocular. "Surely he'll never forsake you!" I laughed.
She looked at the ground a moment. "Oh, at bottom I'm easy."
"Nothing can ever happen to a man so accomplished, so infallible, so armed at all points," I went on, encouragingly.
"Oh, you don't know how he's armed!" she exclaimed, with such an odd quaver that I could account for it only by her being nervous. This idea was confirmed by her moving just afterwards, changing her seat rather pointlessly, not as if to cut our conversation short, but because she was in a fidget. I couldn't know what was the matter with her, but I was presently relieved to see Mrs. Adney come towards us. She had
