“What saith the Gospel according to St. Val?”

“That you were only a bird of passage.”

Lawrence waited a moment before replying.  “Birds of passage have their mating seasons.”  Once more Isabel, not knowing what to make of this remark, let it alone.  “But I should like to possess Val’s good opinion.  What have I done to offend him?  Can’t you give me any tips?”

“It isn’t so much what you do as what you are.  Val’s very, very English.”

“But what am I?”

“Foreign,” said Isabel simply.

“A Jew?  Yes, I knew I should have that prejudice to live down.  But I’m not a hall-marked Israelite, am I?  After all I’m half English by birth and wholly so by breeding.”  Isabel was betrayed into an involuntary and fleeting smile.  “Hallo! what’s this?”

“Oh, Captain Hyde—­”

“Go on.”

“No:  it’s the tiniest trifle, and besides I’ve no right.”

“Ask me anything you like, I give you the right.”

Isabel blushed.  “You must be descended from Jephthah!—­ O! dear, I didn’t mean that!”

“Never mind,” said Lawrence, unable to help laughing.  “My feelings are not sensitive.  But do finish—­you fill me with curiosity.  What shibboleth do I fail in?”

Faithful are the wounds of a friend.  “Englishmen don’t wear jewellery,” murmured Isabel apologetic.

“Sac a papier!” said Lawrence.  “My rings?”

He stretched out his hand, a characteristic hand, strong and flexible, but soft from idleness and white from Gaston’s daily attentions:  a diamond richly set in a cluster of diamonds and emeralds sparkled on the second finger, and a royal turquoise from Iran, an immense stone the colour of the Mediterranean in April, on the third.  “Does Val object to them?  Certainly Val is very English.  My pocket editions of beauty!  That diamond was presented by one of the Rothschilds in gratitude for the help old Hyde-and-seek gave him in getting together his collection of early English watercolours:  as for the other, it never ought to have left the Persian treasury, and there’d have been trouble in the royal house if my father had worn it at the Court.  Have you ever seen such a blue?  On a dull railway journey I can sit and watch those stones by the hour together.  But Val would rather read the Daily Mail”

“Every one laughs at them:  Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even Jimmy.”

“And you?” said Lawrence, taking off the rings:—­not visibly nettled, but a trifle regretful.

Isabel knit her brows.  “Can a thing be very beautiful and historic, and yet not in good taste?—­ It can if it’s out of harmony:  that’s what the Greeks never forgot.  Men ought not to look effeminate—­ Oh!  O Captain Hyde, don’t!”

Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open moor.  “And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.  I thought Val would not leave us long together.—­ Well, Val, what is it to be?  May the young lady come?”