“She played with me, Jacob.  But really she overdid it.  For such a clever woman, I assure you, she overdid it!”

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t keep her friendships to herself,” said Delafield, with sudden heat.

“Oh, so you admit it is a friendship?”

Delafield did not reply.  He had laid down his cigar, and with his hands on his knees was looking steadily into the fire.  His attitude, however, was not one of reverie, but rather of a strained listening.

“What is the meaning, Jacob, of a young woman taking so keen an interest in the fortunes of a dashing soldier—­for, between you and me, I hear she is moving heaven and earth to get him this post—­and then concealing it?”

“Why should she want her kindnesses talked of?” said the young man, impetuously.  “She was perfectly right, I think, to fence with your questions, Sir Wilfrid.  It’s one of the secrets of her influence that she can render a service—­and keep it dark.”

Sir Wilfrid shook his head.

“She overdid it,” he repeated.  “However, what do you think of the man yourself, Jacob?”

“Well, I don’t take to him,” said the other, unwillingly.  “He isn’t my sort of man.”

“And Mademoiselle Julie—­you think nothing but well of her?  I don’t like discussing a lady; but, you see, with Lady Henry to manage, one must feel the ground as one can.”

Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion, and then stretched his legs a little farther towards the fire.  The lamp-light shone full on his silky eyelashes and beard, on his neatly parted hair, and the diamond on his fine left hand.  The young man beside him could not emulate his easy composure.  He fidgeted nervously as he replied, with warmth: 

“I think she has had an uncommonly hard time, that she wants nothing but what is reasonable, and that if she threw you off the scent, Sir Wilfrid, with regard to Warkworth, she was quite within her rights.  You probably deserved it.”

He threw up his head with a quick gesture of challenge.  Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders.

“I vow I didn’t,” he murmured.  “However, that’s all right.  What do you do with yourself down in Essex, Jacob?”

The lines of the young man’s attitude showed a sudden unconscious relief from tension.  He threw himself back in his chair.

“Well, it’s a big estate.  There’s plenty to do.”

“You live by yourself?”

“Yes.  There’s an agent’s house—­a small one—­in one of the villages.”

“How do you amuse yourself?  Plenty of shooting, I suppose?”

“Too much.  I can’t do with more than a certain amount.”

“Golfing?”

“Oh yes,” said the young man, indifferently.  “There’s a fair links.”

“Do you do any philanthropy, Jacob?”

“I like ‘bossing’ the village,” said Delafield, with a laugh.  “It pleases one’s vanity.  That’s about all there is to it.”