Lydia made a brave effort, and told him.  She repeated to him the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it lightly—­apologetically—­as though statements so extravagant had only to be made to be disproved.  His mind meanwhile was divided between strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia enthroned in her mother’s chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of gesture and expression that made up her beauty.  Existence for him during these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment.  He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies were ready.

And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of himself.  A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks before.  He had called the very day after their hurried departure for London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could talk face to face. Le papier est bete! “I had too much to say!”

Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount?  He claimed the right to tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and hopes for the future.  Then, by a swift and effective digression he sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the ferocity of the old man’s will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his life.

“Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man.  He will tell me nothing of what his doctors say to him.  But I put two and two together.  I don’t believe he can possibly live long.  A year or two at most; perhaps much less.  When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into my hands.  It has not been so.  The mind, the will are iron, whatever the physical weakness may be.  He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society.  He reckons that his life will last out his resistance—­his successful resistance—­and that he will go down with the flag flying.  So that he takes an insane pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him.  For it is insane—­remember that!  The moral state, the moral judgments, are all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are concerned, still superb.”

He paused.  Her gaze—­half-shrinking—­was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth.  The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have grown harsher and stronger.