“It seems to me, on the contrary, that you have every one pinned down.  You’ve got everything your own way, and yet you aren’t satisfied.  Peter has taken himself off; old Cousin Vic has paid the debts; and Olivia is ready to go to church and marry you on the first convenient day.  What more can you ask?”

“That’s what she said, by Jove!—­the old Marquise.  She said the question would never be raised unless I raised it.”

Drusilla tried to laugh.  “Eh, bien? as she’d say herself.”

He paused in front of her.  “Eh, bien, there is something else; and,” he added, tapping his forehead sharply, “I’ll be hanged if I know what it is.”

She was about to say something more when the sound of the shutting of the street door stopped her.  There was much puffing and stamping, with shouts for Jane to come and take an umbrella.

“I say, that’s your governor.  I’ll go and talk to him.”

He went without another look at her.  She steadied herself with the tips of her fingers on the tea-table, in order not to swoon.  She knew she wouldn’t swoon; she only felt like it, or like dying.  But all she could do was limply to pour herself out an extra cup of tea and drink it.

* * * * *

In the library Ashley was taking heart of grace.  He had come to ask advice, but he was really pointing out the things that were in his favor.  He repeated Drusilla’s summing-up of them almost word for word.

“You see, as far as that goes, I’ve everything my own way.  No question will be raised unless I raise it.  The fellow has taken himself off; the Marquise has most generally assumed the family liabilities; and Olivia is ready to come to church with me and be married on the first convenient day.  I should be satisfied with that, now shouldn’t I?”

The old man nodded.  “Your difficulties do seem to have been smoothed out.”

He sat, fitting the tips of his fingers together and swinging his leg, in his desk-chair.  The light of the green-shaded desk-lamp alone lit up the room.  In the semi-obscurity porcelains and potteries gleamed like crystals in a cave.  Ashley paced the floor, emerging from minute to minute out of the gloom into the radiance of the lamp.

“I’m not called on to go poking behind things to see what’s there, now am I?”

“Not in the least.”

“I’m willing to consider every one, and I think I do.  But there are limits, by Jove!  Now, really?”

“The minute we recognize limits it’s our duty not to go beyond them.  It’s thus far and no farther—­for the man who knows the stretch of his tether, at any rate.  The trouble with Peter is that his tether is elastic.  It’ll spin out as far as he sees the need to go.  For the rest of us there are limits, as you say; but about him there’s something—­something you might call limitless.”

Ashley rounded sharply.  “You mean he’s so big that no one can be bigger.”