Henrietta permitted herself to reach up and pat the young man on the shoulder, playfully, restrainingly.  An extraordinarily familiar proceeding on her part, marking the strength of her determination to avoid any approach to a quarrel, since she openly denounced and detested all those demonstrations, as between friends and relations, which come under the generic title of “pawing.”

“No, pray don’t be furious with me,” she repeated.  “I quite appreciate how sensitive you naturally must be upon the subject of Damaris.”

“You have given me encouragement, cousin Henrietta”—­this resentfully.

“And why not?  Don’t be disingenuous, my dear Marshall.  I have given you something much more solid than mere encouragement, namely active help, opportunity.  In the right direction, to the right person, I have repeatedly praised you.  But the prize, in this case, is to him who has address and perseverance to win it.  You possess signal advantages through your artistic tastes, your music, your reciting.  But I have never disguised from you—­now honestly, have I?—­there were obstacles and even prejudices to be overcome.”

“Sir Charles despises me.”

“But his daughter gives ample proof that she does not.  And—­you don’t propose to marry Sir Charles, do you?”

Henrietta laughed a trifle shrilly.  The tone of that laugh pierced her hearer’s armour of egoism.  He stared at her in interrogative surprise—­observing which she hastened to retreat down a run-hole.

“Ah!” she cried, “it is really a little too bad to tease you, Marshall.  But one can’t but be tempted to do so at moments.  You take everything so terribly au grand serieux, my young friend.”

“You mean to convey that I am ponderous?”

“Well—­perhaps—­just a shade,” she archly agreed.  “And of ponderosity you must make an effort to cure yourself.—­Mind, though a fault, I consider it one on the right side—­in the connection, that is, which we have just now been discussing.  When a girl has as much intelligence as—­we needn’t name names, need we?—­she resents perpetual chaff and piffle.  They bore her—­seem to her a flagrant waste of time.  Her mind tends to scorn delights and live laborious days—­a tendency which rectifies itself later as a rule.  All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to the other extreme and be heavy in hand.  A happy mien in this as in all things, my dear Marshall.”

“I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist,” he returned sententiously.

“Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after all—­at least I imagine so.—­Now I really cannot stay here any longer giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his newspapers.—­By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see him this afternoon?”

As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the announcements in the Court Circular.  Marshall replied in the negative.  She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer.  But, as she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung back at him—­