He ran out of the room to fetch what he promised. Mrs. Dennison, still faintly smiling, held out her hand to Ruston.
"It's been very pleasant to see you again," she said graciously. "I hope it won't be eight years before our next meeting."
"Floating?" she repeated, with a smile of enquiry.
"Yes; on the surface. I've been in the depths till very lately, and there one meets no good society."
"Yes," he answered, laughing; "you may call it a bit of a struggle."
She looked at him with grave curious eyes.
"And you are not married?" she asked abruptly.
"Why glad, Mr. Ruston? Some people like being married."
"Oh, I don't claim to be above it, Mrs. Dennison," he answered with a laugh, "but a wife would have been a great hindrance to me all these years."
There was a simple and _bona fide_ air about his statement; it was not raillery; and Mrs. Dennison laughed in her turn.
Mr. Ruston, with a passing gleam of surprise at her merriment, bade her a very unemotional farewell, and left her. She sat down and waited idly for her husband's return. Presently he came in. He had caught Ruston in the hall, delivered his pamphlet, and was whistling cheerfully. He took a chair near his wife.
"Rum chap that!" he said. "But he's got a good deal of stuff in him;" and he resumed his lively tune.
The tune annoyed Mrs. Dennison. To suffer whistling without visible offence was one of her daily trials. Harry's emotions and reflections were prone to express themselves through that medium.
"I didn't do half-badly, to-day," said Harry, breaking off again. "Old Tom had got it all splendidly in shape for me--by Jove, I don't know what I should do without Tom--and I think I put it pretty well. But, of course, it's a subject that doesn't catch on with everybody."
It was the dullest subject in the world; it was also, in all likelihood, one of the most unimportant; and dull subjects are so seldom unimportant that the perversity of the combination moved Maggie Dennison to a wondering pity. She rose and came behind the chair where her husband sat. Leaning over the back, she rested her elbows on his shoulders, and lightly clasped her hands round his neck. He stopped his whistle, which had grown soft and contented, laughed, and kissed one of the encircling hands, and she, bending lower, kissed him on the forehead as he turned his face up to look at her.