This drive, the prelude to Henrietta’s campaign, presented that lady at her best.  The advantage of being—­as Henrietta—­essentially artificial, is that you can never, save by forgetful lapse into sincerity, be untrue to yourself.  Hence what a saving of scruples, of self-accusation, of self-torment!  Her plans once fixed she proceeded to carry them out with unswerving ease and spontaneity.  She refused to hurry, her only criterion of personal conduct being success; and success, so she believed, if sound, being a plant of gradual growth.  Therefore she gave both herself and others time.  Once fairly in the saddle, she never strained, never fussed.

Her cue to-day was to offer information rather than to require it.  Curious about many things she might be; but gratification of her curiosity must wait.  Damaris, on her part, listened eagerly, asking nothing better than to be kept amused, kept busy, helped to forget.—­Not Faircloth’s letter—­very, very far from that!—­but the inward conflict of opposing loves, opposing duties, which meditation upon his letter so distractingly produced.  Relatively all, outside that conflict and the dear cause of it, was of small moment—­mere play stuff at best.  But her brain and conscience were tired.  She would be so glad, for a time, only to think about play stuff.

“I want you to go on being kind to Marshall Wace,” Henrietta in the course of conversation presently said.  “He told me how charmingly you received him yesterday, when he called with my note.  He was so pleased.  He is exaggeratedly sensitive owing to unfortunate family complications in the past.”

Damaris pricked up her ears, family complications having latterly acquired a rather painful interest for her.

“Poor man—­I’m sorry,” she said.

“His mother, a favourite cousin of my husband, General Frayling, married an impossible person—­eloped with him, to tell the truth.  Her people, not without reason, were dreadfully put out.  The children were brought up rather anyhow.  Marshall did not go to a public school, which he imagines places him at a disadvantage with other men.  Perhaps it does.  Men always strike me as being quaintly narrow-minded on that subject.  Later he was sent to Cambridge with the idea of his taking Orders and going into the Church.  My husband’s elder brother, Leonard Frayling, is patron of several livings.  He would have presented Marshall to the first which fell vacant, and thus his future would have been secured.  But just as he was going up for deacon’s orders, Marshall, rather I can’t help feeling like a goose, developed theological difficulties.  They were perfectly genuine, I don’t doubt; but they were also singularly ill-timed—­a little earlier, a little later, or not at all would have been infinitely more convenient.  So there he was, poor fellow, thrown on the world at three-and-twenty with no profession and no prospects; for my brother-in-law washed his hands of him when the theological difficulties