And I began to wonder whether the funny frankness that had so disarmed us was really as funny as it looked (the idea of disarmament, you see, was serious), whether he didn’t say these things because he knew we saw him as he really was; because he saw himself as he really was, and couldn’t bear it; because there was no escape for him unless he could make believe that he was in fun when he really wasn’t.

I do believe there was a time (any time before his Tudor period) when he was in fun, pure fun; and even through the Tudor period his enjoyment of himself was innocent.  But as I walked home with him across his moor that evening it was borne in upon me that Jimmy’s innocence was gone.  Living in the country had killed it.  I had never perceived so definite a taint of vulgarity in him before.

You would have thought it would have been all the other way, that living in the country would have made altogether for simplicity and purity.  I believe that quite honestly he had thought it would, that he had come into the country to be purified and simplified, and to put himself right with Viola for ever.  And the horrid irony of it was that the country didn’t do any of these things to him; it complicated him, it saturated him with that taint I’ve mentioned, and instead of putting him right it showed him up.  Quite horribly and cruelly it showed him up.  I do not think there was a single weakness or a single secret meanness that he had that didn’t suddenly rise up and stand out on the background of Amershott.

All through that summer there, quite frankly, I detested Jevons.  I believe that Norah came near detesting him, that she felt something very like contempt for him.

And if Norah felt it you may imagine what Viola would feel.

She was with us one evening (it was June, I think, and our second visit), when Jimmy showed most unmistakably the cloven hoof.  We had come in from a long motor drive, and he had made at once, as he always did, for the silver plate in the hall where cards left by callers were put, if any callers came.  I can see him now, breathing hard.  I can see the glance he cast at the cards, and the little jerky curb he put on his excitement—­he had the grace to be ashamed of it.  And then I see him holding four cards in his hand, sober and quiet and flushed like a man who has triumphed solemnly.  And I hear him read out the names:  “Lord Amerley, Lady Amerley, Lady Octavia Amerley, the Honourable Frances Amerley. That’s all right.  I gave them three months.”

And I see Viola look at him, taking in his figure in its motor-dress, and his face, with the foolish, weak elation he couldn’t for the life of him keep out of it.

Again I see him, with his little dreadful air of fervid solemnity—­and I don’t know whether I dreamed it or whether it was really there—­very spruce and strutting about the lawns of Amerley Park at that garden-party they took us to.