“There!” he said.  “There!  That’s all right, isn’t it?  We shall have Miss Moore in directly.  Where’s your handkerchief?”

She found it and dried her eyes with her head against his shoulder.  Then she lifted a still quivering face to his.  “Edward,—­I’m—­just as sorry as you are,” she said, with a catch in her voice.

He kissed her again, wondering a little at his own softened feelings.  “All right, my girl.  Let’s forget it!” he said.  “You have a good lunch and you’ll feel better!  What are they giving you?  Champagne?”

“Oh no, of course not!”

“Well, why not?  It’s the very thing you want.  Just the occasion.  What?  You sit still and I’ll go and see about it!” He put her down among her cushions, but she clung to him still.  “No, don’t go for a minute!” she said, with a shaky smile.  “It’s so good to have you—­kind to me for once.”

“Good gracious!” he said, but half in jest.  “Am I such a brute as all that?”

She pushed back her sleeve and mutely showed him the marks upon her arm.

He looked, and his brows drew together.  “My doing?”

She nodded.  “Last night—­when—­when I said—­something you didn’t like—­about Mr. Green.”

He scowled a moment longer, then abruptly stooped, took the white arm between his hands and kissed it.  “I’ll get a stick and beat you the next time,” he said.  “You remember that—­and be decent to Green, see?”

The kiss belied the words, covering also a certain embarrassment which Vera was not slow to perceive.  Because of it she found strength to abstain from further argument.  He had undoubtedly conceded a good deal.

“I’ll be decent to anyone,” she said, “so long as you are decent to me.”

“Hear, hear!” said the squire.  “Now dry your eyes and be sensible!  Miss Moore will go for me like mad if she finds you crying again.  If we don’t pull together we shall have that girl running the whole show before we are much older, and neither of us will ever dare even to contradict the other in her presence again.  We shouldn’t like that, should we?”

She laughed a little in spite of her wan countenance.  “Oh, no, Edward.  We mustn’t risk that.”  Then, with a touch of anxiety, “It wasn’t Miss Moore’s idea that you should bring me flowers, was it?”

“No.”  The squire grinned at her suddenly.  “The worthy Columbus was responsible for that.  I found him routing in the lily-bed after snails or some such delicacy.  He was so infernally busy he made me feel ashamed.  So I went down on my knees and joined him, gathered the lot,—­nearly killed myself over it, but that’s an unimportant detail.  Now for your champagne!  You’ll feel a different woman when you’ve had it.”

He departed, leaving his wife looking after him with an odd wistfulness in her eyes.  She was seeing him in a new light which made her feel strangely uncertain of herself also.  Was it possible that all these years of misunderstanding, which she had regarded as inevitable, might have been avoided after all?