“Don’t pinch my wrist below the cuff, Bernard,” said his wife.  “I can’t wear gloves at tea.”

“You can stop out all night for all I care,” said Clowes.  “I’m sick of the sight of you.”

Then Laura knew that the Golden Age was over.

Isabel had refused to go to bed.  She had no nerves:  she saw life in its proper colours without refraction.  The dreadful scene at Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been.  Still she was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm she announced her intention of spending the afternoon in the garden out of the way of kind enquiries:  and she settled herself on an Indian chair behind a thicket of lilac and syringa, while Val and Rowsley and Yvonne brought books and cushions and chocolate and eau de cologne to comfort beauty in distress.

But she had reckoned without the wicket gate in the garden wall, which Lawrence let himself in by.  He caught sight of her as he crossed the lawn and came up to her bare-headed.  “How are you?” he asked without preface.  “Better now?”

His informality went against the grain of Isabel’s taste:  he had no right to presume on a forced situation:  with what fastidious modesty Val would have drawn back!  She was tired, and she did not want to be reminded of what had happened in the morning.  She shut up her book, but kept a finger in the place.  “Thank you.  I’m sorry the others are all out.”

“Mrs. Clowes sent me on ahead.”

For the second time she had made Lawrence redden like a girl, and his easy manner deserted him.  Isabel unconsciously let the book slip from her hand.  The lives of the Forsythe family were less absorbing than her own life when this fiery dramatic glow was shed over it.  A singular smile flitted over her lips:  “Well, you may as well sit down now you are here,” she observed.  Lawrence sat down in a deck chair and Isabel’s smile broadened:  she was laughing at him and teasing him with her eyes, though what she said remained conventional to the point of primness.  “Is Laura coming to see me?  How sweet of her!  But what a pity she couldn’t come with you!  Why couldn’t she?”

“I believe she stayed to look after my cousin.”

“How is Major Clowes?  Did he have a good night and was he in a—­ was he cheerful today?”

“So-so:  he’s not a great talker, is he?”

Isabel’s speaking face expressed dissent.  “Perhaps not when he’s in a good temper.  Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m always forgetting he’s your cousin.”

“I’m prone to forget it myself.  I’ve seen so little of him.”

“(’Though the blase-man-of-the-world had seen thousands of superbly beautiful women in elegant creations by Paquin or Worth, his gaze was riveted as by a mesmeric attraction on the innocent young girl in her simple little white muslin frock, with her lissome ankles and slim, sunburnt hands.’) Laura said you had been a great traveller.  Shall you settle down in England?”