“He is very good-natured,” said Ingram with decision.  “I have known him for years, and I know that he is exceedingly unselfish, and that he would do a ridiculously generous thing to serve a friend, and that a better-intentioned fellow does not breathe in the world.  But he is at times, I admit, very thoughtless and inconsiderate.”

“That sort of good-nature,” said Mrs. Lorraine in her gentlest voice, “is very good in its way, but rather uncertain.  So long as it shines in one direction, it is all right and quite trustworthy, for you want a hard brush to brush sunlight off a wall.  But when the sunlight shifts, you know—­”

“The wall is left in the cold.  Well,” said Ingram, “I am afraid it is impossible for me to dictate to you what you ought to do.  I do not wish to draw you into any interference between husband and wife, or even to let Mr. Lavender know that you think he is not treating Shei—­Mrs. Lavender—­properly.  But if you were to hint to him that he ought to pay some attention to her—­that he should not be going everywhere as if he were a young bachelor in chambers; if you would discourage his coming to see you without bringing her also, and so forth—­surely he would see what you mean.  Perhaps I ask too much of you, but I had intended to ask more.  The fact is, Mrs. Kavanagh, I had done your daughter the injustice of supposing—­”

“I thought we had agreed to say no more about that,” said Mrs. Lorraine quickly, and Ingram was silent.

Half an hour thereafter he was walking back through Holland Park, through the warm light of an autumn afternoon.  The place seemed much changed since he had seen it a couple of hours before.  The double curve of big houses had a more friendly and hospitable look:  the very air seemed to be more genial and comfortable since he had driven up here in the hansom.

Perhaps Mr. Ingram was at this moment a little more perturbed, pleased and bewildered than he would have liked to confess.  He had discovered a great deal in these two hours, been much surprised and fascinated, and had come away fairly stupefied with the result of his mission.  He had indeed been successful:  Lavender would now find a different welcome awaiting him in the house in which he had been spending nearly all his time, to the neglect of his wife.  But the fact is, that as Edward Ingram went rapidly over in his own mind everything that had occurred since his entrance into that house, as he anxiously recalled the remarks made to him, the tone and looks accompanying them, and his own replies, it was not of Lavender’s affairs alone that he thought.  He confessed to himself frankly that he had never yet met any woman who had so surprised him into admiration on their first meeting.