The Figure in the Carpet

of imagination involved in my small precautions. If he was in spirits it wasn't because he had read my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt sure he hadn't read it, th

o this end with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless conspicuity of the sh

rience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in The Middle, to see how it drew him out. He wasn't of course popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that his success was independent of that. He had none the less become in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever

irs to change something. "I know you don't in general look at this kind of thing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You HAVEN'T seen it? Then you must. The man has actually got AT you, at what I always feel, you know." Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look evidently intended to give an idea of what she always felt; but she added that she couldn't have expressed it. The man in the paper expressed it in a striking manner. "Just see there, and there, where I've dashed it, how he brings it out." She had literally marked for him the brightest patches of my prose, and if I was a little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted to read something aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated

ough to deprive Lady Jane of a triumph. I was just reflecting in truth that this interminable board would deprive ME of one when the guest next me, dear woman - she was Miss Poyle, the vicar's sister, a robust unmodulated person - had the happy inspiration and the unusual courage to address herself across it to Vereker, who was opposite, but not directly, so

le's surprise was a fortunate cover for my own. "You me

py to be able to do the same. "It'

lf across the cloth. "Oh, you

doesn't see - " But a dish was at this point passed over

hat?" my neigh

t see a

- how ver

eker laughed mai

which I replied that I had often thought so too, but had somehow taken the thought for a proof on my own part of a tremendous eye. I

ce was the hard polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to carry me in the proper manner - I mean

nwittingly wounded you by those words of mine at dinner to Miss Poyle. I learned but hal

in it became flat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from far within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to