“You don’t know Lord Buntingford?” said Mr. Alcott’s rather muffled voice beside her.

Mrs. Friend turned hastily.

“No—­I never saw him till this afternoon.”

“He isn’t easy to know.  I know him very little, though he gave me this living, and I have business with him, of course, occasionally.  But this I do know, the world is uncommonly full of people—­don’t you find it so?—­who say ’I go, Sir’—­and don’t go.  Well, if Lord Buntingford says ’I go, Sir’—­he does go!”

“Does he often say it?” asked Mrs. Friend.  And the man beside her noticed the sudden gleam in her quiet little face, that rare or evanescent sprite of laughter or satire that even the dwellers in Lancaster Gate had occasionally noticed.

Mr. Alcott considered.

“Well, no,” he said at last.  “I admit he’s difficult to catch.  He likes his own ways a great deal better than other people’s.  But if you do catch him—­if you do persuade him—­well, then you can stake your bottom dollar on him.  At least, that’s my experience.  He’s been awfully generous about land here—­put a lot in my hands to distribute long before the war ended.  Some of the neighbours about—­other landlords—­were very sick—­thought he’d given them away because of the terms.  They sent him a round robin.  I doubt if he read it.  In a thing like that he’s adamant.  And he’s adamant, too, when he’s once taken a real dislike to anybody.  There’s no moving him.”

“You make me afraid!” said Mrs. Friend.

“Oh, no, you needn’t be—­” Mr. Alcott turned almost eagerly to look at her.  “I hope you won’t be.  He’s the kindest of men.  It’s extraordinarily kind of him—­don’t you think?”—­the speaker smilingly lowered his voice—­“taking on Miss Pitstone like this?  It’s a great responsibility.”

Mrs. Friend made the slightest timid gesture of assent.

“Ah, well, it’s just like him.  He was devoted to her mother—­and for his friends he’ll do anything.  But I don’t want to make a saint of him.  He can be a dour man when he likes—­and he and I fight about a good many things.  I don’t think he has much faith in the new England we’re all talking about—­though he tries to go with it.  Have you?” He turned upon her suddenly.

Mrs. Friend felt a pang.

“I don’t know anything,” she said, and he was conscious of the agitation in her tone.  “Since my husband died, I’ve been so out of everything.”

And encouraged by the kind eyes in the plain face, she told her story, very simply and briefly.  In the general clatter and hubbub of the table no one overheard or noticed.

“H’m—­you’re stepping out into the world again as one might step out of a nunnery—­after five years.  I rather envy you.  You’ll see things fresh.  Whereas we—­who have been through the ferment and the horror—­” He broke off—­“I was at the front, you see, for nearly two years—­then I got invalided.  So you’ve hardly realized the war—­hardly known there was a war—­not since—­since Festubert?”