“But, ma’am, the—­the fact is—­”

“Of course it was in the dusk,” continued Mrs Bosenna; “but I certainly thought it suited you.  One meets with so little of the real old-fashioned politeness among men in these days!  Now “—­she let her voice trail off reflectively as her eyes wandered past Captain Cai and rested on the tree-tops in the valley—­“if I was asked to name my bo ideal of an English gentleman—­and the foreigners can’t come near it, you needn’t tell me—­’twould be Sir Brampton Goldsworthy, Bart., of Halberton Court, Devon.”

“Ma’am?”

“That’s close to Holsworthy, where I was brought up.  ’Goldsworthy of Holsworthy’ he liked to be known as, dropping the ‘Sir’:  and he always wore a top hat, rather flat in the brim.  But he’d off with it to anything in woman’s shape. . . .  And that’s what women value.  Respect. . . .  It isn’t a man’s age—­” She broke off and half closed her eyes in reverie.  “And so particular, too, about his body-linen!  Always a high stock collar . . . and his cuffs!”

“Talkin’ about cuffs, now—­” Captain Cai dived a hand into a hip-pocket and drew forth a circlet of white lawn, much flattened.  “I found this in the garden last night—­by the rose-bushes.”

“Thank you—­yes, it is mine, of course.  I missed it on the way home.”  Mrs Bosenna reached out her hand for it.  “You must have set me down for a very careless person?  But with all my responsibilities just now—­” She concluded the sentence with a sigh, and held open the gate, warning him to beware of the wet paint.  “You see, there is so much to be looked after on a farm.  One can never trust to servants—­or at any rate not to the men kind.  Dinah is different; but even with Dinah—­” Mrs Bosenna let fall another, slightly fainter, sigh.

“That reminds me,” said Captain Cai hardily entering, and for all his lack of observation falling at once under the spell of the little front garden—­so scrupulously tidy it was, so trim and kempt, with a pathway of white pebbles leading up between clumps of daffodils and tulips to a neatly thatched porch:  so homely too, with but a low fence of euonymus shutting off all that could offend in the court before the cow-byres; so fragrant already with scent of the just sprouting lemon verbena; so obviously the abode of cleanly health, with every window along the white-washed house front open to the April air.  “That reminds me, I never mentioned the—­the deceased—­your late husband, I mean, ma’am—­nor how sorry I was to hear of it.”

“Did you know him?” asked Mrs Bosenna, scarcely glancing up as she pinched the fragrance out of an infant bud of the lemon verbena.

“Very slightly, ma’am.  Indeed, I don’t remember meetin’ him but once, and that was at Summercourt Fair, of all places; me bein’ home just then from a trip, an’ takin’ a day off, as you might say, just to see how things was gettin’ on ashore.  As fate would have it I happened into a boxin’ booth, which was twopence, and there, as I was watchin’ a bout, some one says at my elbow, ‘’Tis a noble art, deny it who can!’ An’ that was your late husband.  We’d never met afore to my knowledge, an’ we never met again; but his words have come back to me more’n once, an’ the free manly way he spoke ’em.”