But the tone had grown suddenly dubious.  Lady Tatham’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Go to Threlfall, Harry?”

“Well, not to call on Melrose, mother!  I should have to make sure he was out of the way.  But I feel as if I ought to do something about Faversham.  The fact is he did me a great kindness my first term at Oxford—­he got me into a little club I wanted to belong to.”

“Oh, but you could belong to any club you wished!” cried Mrs. Penfold.

Tatham laughed and coloured.  Lady Tatham slipped the slightest look at Lydia.

“Not at all.  Faversham was awfully useful.  I must see what can be done.  He can’t stay on at that place.”

“You never go to Threlfall?” Mrs. Penfold addressed her hostess.

“Never,” said Lady Tatham quietly.  “Mr. Melrose is impossible.”

“I should jolly well think he is!” said Tatham; “the most grasping and tyrannical old villain!  He’s got a business on now of the most abominable kind.  I have been hearing the whole story this week.  A man who dared to county court him for some perfectly just claim.  And Melrose in revenge has simply ruined him.  Then there’s a right of way dispute going on—­scandalous!—­nothing to do with me!—­but I’m helping other people to fight him.  And his cottages!—­you never saw such pigsties!  He’s defied every sort of inspector.  I believe everybody’s afraid of him.  And you can’t get a yard of land out of him for any public purpose whatever.  Well, now that I’m on the County Council, I mean to go for him!"

The young man sprang up, apparently to fetch cigarettes, really that he might once more obtain a full view of Lydia, who had moved from the tea-table to a more distant seat.

Mrs. Penfold waved the silver box aside.  “I never learnt”—­she said, adding with soft, upturned eyes—­confidingly—­“sometimes I wish I did.  Oh, Lydia will!”

And Lydia, following Lady Tatham’s lead, quietly lit up.  Tatham who cherished some rather strict and old-fashioned notions about women, very imperfectly revealed even to his mother, was momentarily displeased; then lost himself in the pleasure of watching a white hand and arm—­for the day was hot and sleeves short—­in new positions.

Lady Tatham looked round in answer to her son’s last words.

“I wish, Harry, you’d leave him alone.”

“Who?  Melrose? Mother! Oh, I forgot—­he’s a sort of cousin, isn’t he?”

“My second cousin.”

“Worse luck!  But that’s nothing, unless one chooses it shall be.  I believe, mother, you know a heap of things about Melrose you’ve never told me!”

Lady Tatham smiled faintly, but did not reply.  Whereat Mrs. Penfold whose curiosity was insatiable, within lady-like bounds, tried to ask questions of her hostess.  A wife?  Surely there had been a wife?

“Certainly—­twenty years ago.  I saw her.”  The answer came readily.