But her habit was not to sit down under an adverse circumstance, but to probe its source and eradicate it, or, at least, counteract it.  Thus, while she chattered eloquently to Sir Tedbury Delvine, her keen brain was weighing things.  John Derringham had certainly had a look of aroused passion in his eyes when he had pressed her hand in a lingered good night; he had even said some words of a more advanced insinuation as to his intentions towards her than he had ever done before.  They were never exact—­always some fugitive hint to which afterwards she would try to fix some meaning as she reviewed their meetings.  She had not seen him at breakfast because she never came down in the morning until eleven or twelve, and he had already gone out, she heard, when she did descend.

It followed then that either he had received some disturbing letter by the post—­only one on Good Friday—­or something had occurred during his visit to his old master.  It would be her business to find out which of these two things it was.  Could the Professor be married, and might there be some woman in the family?  Or was it nothing to do with the Professor or with a letter, or was there a more present reason?  Had Cora Lutworth attracted him with her youth and high spirits?  They were walking ahead now, and she could hear his laugh and see how they were enjoying themselves.

She had been a perfect fool to ask Cora.  She did not fear a single Englishwoman, the powers of most of whom in her heart she despised—­but Cora was of her own race, and well equipped to rival her in a question of marriage.  Cora was only twenty-one, and she herself was thirty—­and there was the divorce which, although she had found it no bar to her entrance into the most exclusive English society, still might perhaps rankle unconsciously in the mind of a man mounting the political ladder, and determined to secure the highest honors.

She felt she hated Cora, and would have destroyed her with a look if she had been able.

Miss Lutworth, meanwhile, brimful of the joy of life and insouciance, was amusing herself vastly.  And John Derringham was experiencing that sense of relaxation and irresponsible pleasure he got sometimes when he was overworked from going to an excruciatingly funny Paris farce.  Miss Lutworth did not appeal to his brain at all, although she was quite capable of doing so; she just made him feel gay and frolicsome with her deliciously ruse view of the world and life in general.  He forgot his ruffled temper of the morning, and by the time they had returned for tea, was his brilliant self again, and quite ready to sit in a low chair at his hostess’s side, while she leaned back among the cushions of her sofa, in her own sitting-room, whither she had enticed him during that nondescript hour before dinner, when each person could do what he pleased.