“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.”

“And you’re all in it together, damn you!” Lawrence broke out with an angry laugh.  “It’s all equally picturesque—­feudal’s the word!  I never knew anything like it in my life and I wouldn’t have believed it could continue to exist.  What do you do with gipsies? evict ’em, I suppose.”  He flung a second question at Val which made the son of a vicarage knit his brows.

“As a matter of fact there’s a house in Brook Lane about which Bendish and I are a good deal exercised in our minds at the present moment . . . and the percentage of children born too soon after marriage is disastrous.  You’re all out, Hyde.  Nothing could be more commonplace than Chilmark, believe me:  life is like this all over rural England, and it’s only from a distance that one takes it for Arcadia.”

“Folly,” said Lawrence.  “Good God, why should you exercise your simple minds over the house in Brook Lane?  Ah! because the men who go to it are your own men, and the parsonage and the Castle are answerable for their souls.”  Val, irritated, suggested that if Hyde’s forebears had lived in Chilmark since the time when every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling.  “But they didn’t,” said Lawrence, drily.  “My grandfather was a pawnbroker in the New Cut.”

“Then perhaps you’re hardly in a position to judge.”

“Judge?  I don’t judge, my good fellow—­I’m lost in admiration!  In an age of materialism it’s refreshing to come across these simple, homespun virtues.  I didn’t know there was a man left in England that would exist, for choice, on three hundred a year.  Are you always content with your rustic ideals, Val?  Haven’t you any ambition?”

“I?” said Val.

“‘Carry me out of the fight,’” quoted Lawrence under his breath.  “I swear I forgot.”

Silence fell again, the silence on Lawrence’s part of continual conflict and adjustment, and on Val’s mainly of irritation.  Lawrence talked too much and too loosely, and was over-given to damning what he disliked—­a trick that went with his rings and his diamond monogram.  Val was not interested in a townsman’s amateur satire; in so far as Lawrence was not satirical, he had probably drunk one glass more of Bernard’s’ champagne than was good for him!  In the upshot, Val was less disinclined to credit Rowsley than half an hour ago.

Lawrence roused himself.  “About your sister:  I was sorry afterwards to have stayed so long.  She seemed none the worse for it at the time, but no doubt she ought to keep quiet for a bit.  Will you make my excuses to her?”

“I will with pleasure.”

“And will you allow me to tackle Bernard about the agency?”

“To—?”

“If you won’t resent my interfering?  I can generally knock some sense into Bernard’s head.  It’s an iniquitous thing that he should take advantage of your generosity, Val.”