But Lydia in particular could get nothing out of her.  It seemed to her that Felicia looked at her as though she disliked her.  And every now and then the small stranger would try to see herself in the only mirror that the cottage drawing-room afforded; lengthening out her long, thin neck, and turning her curly head stealthily from side to side like a swan preening.  Once, when she thought no one was observing her, she took a carnation from a vase near her—­it had been sent over from Duddon that morning!—­and put it in her dress.  And the next moment, having pulled off her glove, she looked with annoyance at her own roughened hand, and then at Lydia’s delicate fingers playing with a paper-knife.  Frowning, she hastily slipped her glove on again.

As soon as Tatham and his mother reappeared, she jumped up with alacrity, a smile breaking with sudden and sparkled beauty on her pinched face, and went to stand by Victoria’s side, looking up at her with eager docility and admiration.

Victoria, however, left her, in order to draw Lydia into a corner beside a farther window.

“I am sorry to say Harry has received a very unsatisfactory letter from Mr. Faversham.”

“May I ask him about it?”

“He wants to tell you.  I am carrying Miss Melrose back with me.  But Harry will stay.”

Words which cost Victoria a good deal.  If what she now believed was the truth, how monstrous that her Harry should be kept dangling here!  Her pride was all on edge.  But Harry ruled her.  She could make no move till his eyes too were opened.

Meanwhile, on all counts, Faversham was the enemy.  To that chasse first and foremost, Victoria vowed herself.

* * * * *

“Well, what do you think of her?” said Tatham, good-humouredly, as he raised his hat to Felicia and his mother disappearing in the car.  “She’s more alive to-day; but you can see she has been literally starved.  That brute Melrose!”

Lydia made some half audible reply, and with a view to prolonging his tete-a-tete with her, he led her strolling along the road, through a golden dusk, touched with moonrise.  She followed, but all her pleasant self-confidence with regard to him was gone; she walked beside him, miserable and self-condemned; a theorist defeated by the incalculable forces of things.  How to begin with him—­what line to take—­how to undo her own work—­she did not know; her mind was in confusion.

As for him, he was no sooner alone with her than bliss descended on him.  He forgot Faversham and the Melroses.  He only wished to talk to her, and of himself.  Surely, so much, “friendship” allowed.

He began, accordingly, to comment eagerly on her letters to him, and his to her, explaining this, questioning that.  Every word showed her afresh that her letters had been the landmarks of his Scotch weeks, the chief events of his summer; and every word quickened a new remorse.  At last she could bear it no longer.  She broke abruptly on his talk.