“Oh, just ourselves and one or two girls and men.  Lord Rickmansworth is to be there a day or two, if he can.  And—­oh, yes, Mr. Haddington, I think.”

“Isn’t Haddington staying here?”

“I don’t know.  I understood not.  So your party will break up,” Kate went on.  “Of course, Claudia can’t stay when I go.”

“Why not?”

“Really, Eugene, it would be hardly the thing.”

“I believe my mother is not thinking of going.”

“Do you mean you will ask Claudia?”

“I certainly cannot ask her to curtail her visit.”

“Anyhow, Father Stafford goes soon, and she won’t stay then.”

This last shaft accomplished Miss Bernard’s presumable object.  Eugene lost his temper.

“Forgive me for saying so, Kate,” he said, “but really at times your mind seems to me positively vulgar.”

“I am not going to quarrel.  I am quite aware of what you want.”

“What’s that?”

“An opportunity for quarreling.”

“If that’s all, I might have found several.  But come, Kate, it’s no use, and not very dignified, to squabble.  We haven’t got on so well as we might.  But I dare say it’s my fault.”

“Do you want to throw me over?” asked Kate scornfully.

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t talk like a breach-of-promise plaintiff!  I am and always have been perfectly ready to fulfill my engagement.  But you don’t make it easy for me.  Unless you ‘throw me over,’ as you are pleased to phrase it, things will remain as they are.”

“I have been taught to consider an engagement as binding as a marriage.”

“No warrant for such a view in Holy Scripture.”

“And whatever my feelings may be—­and you can hardly wonder if, after your conduct, they are not what they were—­I shall consider myself bound.”

“I have never proposed anything else.”

“Your conduct with Claudia—­”

“I must ask you to leave Lady Claudia alone.  If you come to that—­but there, I was just going to scratch back like a school-girl.  Let us remember our manners, if nothing else.”

“And our principles,” added Kate haughtily.

“By all means, and forget our deviations from them.  And now this conversation may as well end, may it not?”

Kate’s only answer was to walk straight away to the house.

Eugene joined Claudia; Ayre, in his absence, had been reinforced by the accession of Bob Territon.

“Kate’s going to-morrow,” Eugene announced.

“So I heard,” said Claudia.  “We must go, too—­we have been here a terrible time.”

“Why?”

“It’s all nonsense!” interposed Bob decisively; “we can’t go for a week.  The match is fixed for next Wednesday.”

“But,” said Claudia, “I’m not going to play.”

“I am,” said Bob.  “And where do you propose to go to?”

“No, Lady Claudia,” said Eugene, “you must see us through the great day.  I really wish you would.  The whole county’s coming, and it will be too much for my mother alone.  After the cricket-match, if you still insist, the deluge!”