nevertheless he envied.  In contrast with its unstudied ease he could feel his own social methods to be labored and apologetic.  Where he was watchful to do the right thing, what Ashley said or did became the right thing because he said or did it.  With the echo of soft English vowels and clear, crisp consonants in his ears, his own pronunciations, too, were rough with the harshness transmitted from an ancestry to whom the melody of speech had been of no more practical concern than the music of the spheres.

Something of all this Olivia guessed.  She guessed it with a feeling of being on his side—­on the American side—­which a month ago would have astonished her.  She guessed, too, on Davenant’s part, that feeling of irritation which the calm assumptions of the Old World are likely to create when in contact with the aggressive unpretentiousness of the New, and if need were she was ready to stand by him.  All she could say, however, for the moment was: 

“Won’t you sit down?  Perhaps I ought to ring for tea.”

She made the latter remark from habit.  It was what she was accustomed to think of when on an autumn day the sun went behind the distant rim of Brookline hills and dusk began to gather in the oval room, as it was gathering now.  If she did not ring, it was because of her sense of the irony of offering hospitality in a house where not even a cup of tea was paid for.

She seated herself beside the round table in the chair she had occupied a half-hour earlier, facing inward to the room instead of outward to the portico.  Ashley backed to the curving wall of the room, while Davenant scarcely advanced beyond the doorway.  In his slow, careful approach the latter reminded her somewhat of a big St. Bernard dog responding to the summons of a leopard.

“Been up to see—?” Ashley nodded in the direction of what he took to be Guion’s room.

Davenant, too, nodded, but said nothing.

“How did you find papa to-day?”

“Pretty fair, Miss Guion; only, perhaps, a little more down on his luck than usual.”

“The excitement kept him up at first.  Now that that’s over—­”

Ashley interrupted her, addressing himself to Davenant.  “I understand that it’s to you we owe Mr. Guion’s relief from the most pressing part of his cares.”

Davenant’s face clouded.  It was the thing he was afraid of—­Ashley’s intrusion into the little domain of helpfulness which for a few days he had made his own.  He answered warily: 

“My business with Mr. Guion, Colonel, has been private.  I hope you won’t mind if we leave it so.”

Ashley’s manner took on the diplomatic persuasiveness he used toward restive barbaric potentates.

“Not a bit, my dear fellow.  Of course it’s private—­only not as regards Miss Guion and me.  You simply must allow us to say how grateful we are for your help, even though it need be no more than temporary.”