“Bit Isabel!”

“Made his teeth pretty nearly meet in her forearm.  She was trying to soothe the dear dog.  Mr. Stafford’s theories may be ethically beautiful, but I object to their being carried to extremes.  Frankly, I should describe your young friend as idiotically rash,” said Lawrence with a wintry smile.  “I couldn’t prevent her doing it because I hadn’t the remotest notion she was going to do it.  The Dane was practically mad with rage.  I could have cuffed her myself with pleasure.  It was a wild thing to do and not at all agreeable for me.”

“But, my dear Lawrence, that is one way of looking at it!” Laura protested, amused by his cool egoism, though she took it with the necessary grain of salt.  “Bitten by that horrible dog?  My poor Isabel! she loves dogs—­I don’t suppose she stopped to consider her own feelings or yours.”

“She ought to have had more sense.”

“Hear, hear!” said Bernard.  “Half the trouble in the world comes from women shoving in where they’re not wanted.  It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Lawrence, after lying here to be slobbered over by a pack of old women.  I always exclude you, my dear,” he nodded to Laura, “but the parson twaddles on till he makes me sick, and Val’s not much better.  What’s a woman want with courage?  Teach her to buy decent clothes and put ’em on properly, and she’s learning something useful.  I’ll guarantee Isabel only got in the way.  But you, Lawrence,” he measured his cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, “I should have liked to see you tackle the Dane.  You’re a big chap—­deeper in the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach.  What’s your chest measurement?—­ Yes, you look it.  And nothing in your hand but a stick?  By Jove, it must have been worth watching!  Hey, Laura?”

“Bernard, you are embarrassing!  You will make even Lawrence shy.  But, yes,” Laura laid her hand on Hyde’s arm:  “I should have liked to watch you fight the Dane.”

How long was it since any one had spoken to Lawrence in that warm tone of affection?  Not since his father died.  From time to time Mrs. Cleve or other ladies had flattered his senses or his vanity, but none of them had ever looked at him with Laura’s kind admiring eyes.  Perhaps after all there was something to be said for family life!  Tragic wreck as Clowes was, he would have been far more to be pitied but for his wife:  their marriage, crippled and sterilized, was yet—­as Lawrence saw it—­a beautiful relation.  Suppose he stood in that relation to Isabel?  Sitting at table in the cool panelled diningroom, his careless pose stiffening under Laura’s touch, Lawrence for the first time began to wonder whether he would not gain more in happiness than he would lose in freedom if he were to make the child his wife.