Presently Wickham, seeing that Mrs. Almar seemed to be safely engaged, ventured back.  And they were all thus innocently occupied when luncheon was announced.

Christine came down looking particularly lovely.  It is a precaution which a good-looking woman rarely fails to take in a crisis.  She was wearing a deep blue dress trimmed with fur, and only needed a solid gold halo behind her head to make her look like a Byzantine saint.

“Well, Miss Fenimer,” said Wickham, as they sat down.  “You look very blooming after your terrible experiences.”

Christine had come prepared for battle.  “Oh, they weren’t so very terrible, Mr. Wickham, thank you,” she said, and she leant her elbow on the table and played with those imitation pearls which she now hoped so soon to give to her maid.  “Mr. Riatt is the most wonderful provider—­expert as a cook as well as a furnace-man.”

“It mayn’t have been terrible for you,” put in Ussher, who had a habit of conversational reversion, “but I bet it was no joke in the tool-house!  How an intelligent woman like you, Christine, could dream of making a man spend the night in that hole, just for the sake of—­”

“But I thought it was Mr. Riatt’s own choice,” said Nancy gently.

“You wouldn’t think so if you could have felt the place,” Ussher continued.  “And what difference did it make?  Who was there to talk?  Every one knows that their being there was just an unavoidable accident—­”

“Oh, if it had been an accident!” said Nancy, and it was as if a little venomous snake had suddenly wriggled itself into the conversation.  Every one turned toward her, and her brother asked sternly: 

“If, it had been an accident, Nancy?  What the deuce do you mean by if?”

Nancy shook her small head.  “I express myself badly,” she said.  “English rhetoric was left out of my education.”

“You manage to convey your ideas, dear,” said Laura.

“I was trying to say that if poor, dear Christine had not been so unfortunately the one to hit the horse in the head, and start him off—­”

Wickham pricked up his ears.  “Oh, I say, Miss Fenimer,” he exclaimed, “did you really hit the horse?”

“Certainly, I did, Mr. Wickham.”

“But what did you do that for?”

Christine did not trouble to answer this question.  Hickson, who had been suffering far more than any one, rushed to the rescue.

“Miss Fenimer did not do it on purpose, Wickham.  She happened to be standing—­”

“Oh, is that what your sister meant?” said Christine, as if a sudden light dawned on her.  “Tell me, Nancy darling, do you really think I hit the horse on purpose, so as to have an uninterrupted evening with Mr. Riatt?  How you do flatter men!  It’s a great art.  I’m afraid I shall never learn it.”

For the first time, Riatt found himself looking at her with a certain amount of genuine admiration.  This was very straight fighting.  “They have the piratical virtues,” he thought, “courage, and the ability to give and take hard blows.”