That the whole matter was composed of the most delicate and
intricate threads never occurred to him for an instant. Clare had loved him
once. Clare would love him again--and the sooner it happened the better for
him.
Meanwhile Mrs. Rossiter being enemy rather than ally there remained Cards.
But Cards was strange. Peter could never claim to have been intimate with
him--their relationship had been founded on an inequality, on a recognition
from Peter of Cards' superiority. Cards had always laughed at Peter, always
patronised him. But now, although Cards had been in the place so much of
late, the distance seemed farther than ever before.
Cards was as kind as he could be--always in good spirits, always ready to
do anything, but Peter noticed that it was only when Clare was present that
Cards changed from jest to earnest. "He thinks Clare worth talking to
seriously.... I suppose it's because he was at Dawson's ... but after all
I'm not an imbecile."
This attitude of Cards was in fact as vague and nebulous as all the other
things that seemed now to stand between Peter and Clare.
Peter tried to talk to Cards--he was always prevented--held off with a
laughing hand.
"What's the matter with me?" thought Peter. "What have I done? It's like
being out in a fog."
At last one evening, after dinner, when Clare and Mrs.
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