In some respects the prospect did not smile on her.  Yet as, next day, emancipated at length from monotonies of the sick-chamber, she drove behind the free-moving little chestnut horses through the streets of the town—­sleepy in the hot afternoon quiet—­and along the white glaring esplanade, Henrietta admitted the existence of compensations.  In the brilliant setting of some world-famous German spa, though she—­as she believed—­would have been perfectly at her ease, what about her companions?  For in such scenes of high fashion, her own good clothes are not sufficient lifebelt to keep a pretty woman quite complacently afloat.  Your male associates must render you support, be capable of looking the part and playing up generally, if your enjoyment is to be complete.  And for all that Marshall Wace, frankly, couldn’t be depended on.  Not only was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public.  A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of “neck-wear.”  To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage to which Henrietta felt herself entirely unequal.  Preferable the obscurity of Cotteret-les-Bains—­gracious heaven, ten thousand times preferable!

Did not Dr. Stewart-Walker, moreover, hold out hopes that, by following his advice, the General’s strength might be renewed, if not precisely like that of the eagle, yet in the more modest likeness of some good, biddable, burden-bearing animal—­the patient ass, if one might so put it without too obvious irony?  As handyman, aide-de-camp, and, on occasion, her groom of the chambers, the General had deserved very well of Henrietta.  He had earned her sincere commendation.  To restore him to that level of convenient activity was, naturally, her main object; and if a sojourn at some rather dull spot in the Ardennes, promised to secure this desired end, let it be accepted without hesitation.  For the proverbial creaking, yet long-hanging, gate—­here Henrietta had the delicacy to take refuge in hyperbole—­she had no liking whatever.  She could not remember the time when Darby and Joan had struck her as an otherwise than preposterous couple, offspring of a positively degraded sentimentality.

But there, since it threatened depressing conclusions, Henrietta agreed with herself to pursue the line of reflection no further.—­“Sufficient unto the day”—­to look beyond is, the thirties once passed, to raise superfluous spectres.  And this day, in itself supplied food for reflections of a quite other character; ones which set both her curiosity and partiality for intrigue quite legitimately afire.