‘I remember no such arrangement,’ said the Squire, in a fury.

’Oh, father—­why, I heard her speak to you!  And I’m sure she wanted a little break.  She’s been looking dead-tired lately, and she said she had a headache at lunch.’

‘Very well.  That’ll do,’ said the Squire, and Pamela departed, virtuously conscious of having stood by Elizabeth, though she disliked her.

The Squire felt himself generally cornered.  No doubt she was now telling her story to the Penningtons, who, of course, would disapprove the gates affair, in any case.  The long hours before dinner passed away.  The Squire thought them interminable.  Dinner was a gloomy and embarrassed function.  His daughters were afraid of rousing a fresh whirlwind of temper, if the gates were mentioned; and nothing else was interesting.  The meal was short and spare, and the Squire noticed for the first time that while meat was offered to him, the others fed on fish and vegetables.  All to put him in the wrong, of course!

After dinner he went back to the library.  Work was impossible.  He hung over the fire smoking, or turning over the pages of a fresh section of the catalogue which Elizabeth had placed—­complete—­on his desk that morning.

It seemed to him that all the powers of mischief had risen against him.  The recent investigation of his affairs made by Elizabeth at his express wish, slight and preliminary though it was, had shown him what he had long and obstinately refused to see—­that the estate had seriously gone down in value during the preceding five years; that he had a dozen scraps and disputes on his hands, more than enough to rasp the nerves of any ordinary man—­and as far as nerves were concerned, he knew very well that he was not an ordinary man; that, in short, he was impoverished and embarrassed; his agent was a scandal and must be dismissed, and his new lawyers, a grasping, incompetent crew.  For a moment, indeed, he had had a glimpse of a clear sky.  A woman, who seemed to have the same kind of business faculty that many Frenchwomen possess, had laid hands on his skein of troubles, and might have unravelled them.  But she had thrown him over.  In a little while he would have to let Mannering—­for who would buy an estate in such a pickle?—­sell his collections, and go and live in a flat in West Kensington.  Then he hoped his enemies—­Chicksands in particular—­would be satisfied.

But these, to do him justice, were not the chief thoughts, not the considerations in his mind that smarted most.  Another woman secretary or woman accountant—­for, after all, clever women with business training are now as thick as blackberries—­might have helped him to put his affairs straight; but she would not have been a Miss Bremerton, with her scholarship, her taste, her love of the beautiful things that he loved.  He seemed to see her fair skin flushing with pleasure as they went through a Greek chorus together, or to watch her tenderly handling a bronze, or holding a Tanagra figure to the light.