“I have never been across a horse in my life, Lady Marayne.”

“Tut, tut,” said Sir Godfrey.  “Why!—­it’s the best of exercise.  Every man ought to ride.  Good for the health.  Keeps him fit.  Prevents lodgments.  Most trouble due to lodgments.”

“I’ve never had a chance of riding.  And I think I’m afraid of horses.”

“That’s only an excuse,” said Lady Marayne.  “Everybody’s afraid of horses and nobody’s really afraid of horses.”

“But I’m not used to horses.  You see—­I live on my mother.  And she can’t afford to keep a stable.”

His hostess did not see his expression of discomfort.  Her pretty eyes were intent upon the peas with which she was being served.

“Does your mother live in the country?” she asked, and took her peas with fastidious exactness.

Prothero coloured brightly.  “She lives in London.”

“All the year?”

“All the year.”

“But isn’t it dreadfully hot in town in the summer?”

Prothero had an uncomfortable sense of being very red in the face.  This kept him red.  “We’re suburban people,” he said.

“But I thought—­isn’t there the seaside?”

“My mother has a business,” said Prothero, redder than ever.

“O-oh!” said Lady Marayne.  “What fun that must be for her?”

“It’s a real business, and she has to live by it.  Sometimes it’s a worry.”

“But a business of her own!” She surveyed the confusion of his visage with a sweet intelligence.  “Is it an amusing sort of business, Mr. Prothero?”

Prothero looked mulish.  “My mother is a dressmaker,” he said.  “In Brixton.  She doesn’t do particularly badly—­or well.  I live on my scholarship.  I have lived on scholarships since I was thirteen.  And you see, Lady Marayne, Brixton is a poor hunting country.”

Lady Marayne felt she had unmasked Prothero almost indecently.  Whatever happened there must be no pause.  There must be no sign of a hitch.

“But it’s good at tennis,” she said.  “You do play tennis, Mr. Prothero?”

“I—­I gesticulate,” said Prothero.

Lady Marayne, still in flight from that pause, went off at a tangent.

“Poff, my dear,” she said, “I’ve had a diving-board put at the deep end of the pond.”

The remark hung unanswered for a moment.  The transition had been too quick for Benham’s state of mind.

“Do you swim, Mr. Prothero?” the lady asked, though a moment before she had determined that she would never ask him a question again.  But this time it was a lucky question.

“Prothero mopped up the lot of us at Minchinghampton with his diving and swimming,” Benham explained, and the tension was relaxed.

Lady Marayne spoke of her own swimming, and became daring and amusing at her difficulties with local feeling when first she swam in the pond.  The high road ran along the far side of the pond—­“And it didn’t wear a hedge or anything,” said Lady Marayne.  “That was what they didn’t quite like.  Swimming in an undraped pond. . . .”