He would have desired to take her in his arms, like a
child, to pet and caress her into happiness. Jack was evidently
feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and was frankly bored;
but never had Howard been more grateful for Mr. Sandys' flow of
spirits than he was that evening. Mr. Sandys was thirsting for
experience and research, and he was also in a state of jubilant
sentimentality about Cambridge and his old recollections. He told
stories of the most unemphatic kind in the most emphatic way, and
Howard was amused at the radiant hues with which the lapse of time
had touched the very simplest incidents of his career. Mr. Sandys
had been, it seemed, a terrible customer at Cambridge--disobedient,
daring, incisive, the hero of his contemporaries, the dread of the
authorities; but all this on high-minded lines. Moreover, he had
brought with him a note-book of queries, to be settled in the
Library; while he had looked up in the list of residents everyone
with whom he had been in the remotest degree acquainted, and a long
vista of calls opened out before him. It was a very delightful
evening to Howard, in spite of everything, simply because Maud was
there; and he found himself extraordinarily conscious of her
presence, observant of all she said and did, glad that her eyes
should rest upon his familiar setting; and when they sat afterwards
in his study and smoked, he saw that her eyes travelled with a
curious intentness over everything--his books, his papers, his
furniture.
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