But a further pause was broken only by my companion’s measured steps and my own awkward shuffle.

“That baby!” I insisted.

“Did you tell him he was one, Captain Clephane?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, dryly, but drawn so far at last.

“I spared his feelings.  But can it be true, Mrs. Lascelles?”

“It is true.”

“Is it a fact that you didn’t give him a definite answer?”

“I don’t know what business it is of yours,” said Mrs. Lascelles, bluntly; “and since he seems to have told you everything, neither do I know why you should ask me.  However, it is quite true that I did not finally refuse him on the spot.”

This carefully qualified confirmation should have afforded me abundant satisfaction.  I was over-eager in the matter, however, and I cried out impetuously: 

“But you will?”

“Will what?”

“Refuse the boy!”

We had reached the seat, but neither of us sat down.  Mrs. Lascelles appeared to be surveying me with equal resentment and defiance.  I, on the other hand, having shot my bolt, did my best to look conciliatory.

“Why should I refuse him?” she asked at length, with less emotion and more dignity than her bearing had led me to expect.  “You seem so sure about it, you know!”

“He is such a boy—­such an utter child—­as I said just now.”  I was conscious of the weakness of saying it again, and it alone, but my strongest arguments were too strong for direct statement.

This one, however, was not unfruitful in the end.

“And I,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “how old do you think I am?  Thirty-five?”

“Of course not,” I replied, with obvious gallantry.  “But I doubt if Bob is even twenty.”

“Well, then, you won’t believe me, but I was married before I was his age, and I am just six-and-twenty now.”

It was a surprise to me.  I did not doubt it for a moment; one never did doubt Mrs. Lascelles.  It was indeed easy enough to believe (so much I told her) if one looked upon the woman as she was, and only difficult in the prejudicial light of her matrimonial record.  I did not add these things.  “But you are a good deal older,” I could not help saying, “in the ways of the world, and it is there that Bob is such an absolute infant.”

“But I thought an Eton boy was a man of the world?” said Mrs. Lascelles, quoting me against myself with the utmost readiness.

“Ah, in some things,” I had to concede.  “Only in some things, however.”

“Well,” she rejoined, “of course I know what you mean by the other things.  They matter to your mind much more than mere age, even if I had been fifteen years older, instead of five or six.  It’s the old story, from the man’s point of view.  You can live anything down, but you won’t let us.  There is no fresh start for a woman; there never was and never will be.”

I protested that this was unfair.  “I never said that, or anything like it, Mrs. Lascellcs!”