What vanity he had reckoned on had deserted him along with any hope of compromising a case only too palpably against him.  And yet, through the rudiments of better feeling awakening within him, the instinct of thrift still coloured his ideas a little.

“I’m dead wrong, Alida.  We might just as well save fees and costs and go over the damages together....  I’ll pay them.  I ought to, anyway.  I suppose I don’t usually do what I ought.  Malcourt says I don’t—­said so very severely—­very mortifyingly the other day.  So—­if you’ll get him or your own men to decide on the amount—­”

“Do you think the amount matters?”

“Oh, of course it’s principle; very proper of you to stand on your dignity—­”

“I am not standing on it now; I am listening to your utter misapprehension of me and my motives....  I don’t care for any—­damages.”

“It is perfectly proper for you to claim them, if,” he added cautiously, “they are within reason—­”

“Mr. Portlaw!”

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“I would not touch a penny!  I meant to give it to the schools, here—­whatever I recovered....  Your misunderstanding of me is abominable!”

He hung his head, heavy-witted, confused as a stupid schoolboy, feeling, helplessly, his clumsiness of mind and body.

Something of this may have been perceptible to her—­may have softened her ideas concerning him—­ideas which had accumulated bitterness during the year of his misbehaviour and selfish neglect.  Her instinct divined in his apparently sullen attitude the slow intelligence and mental perturbation of a wilful, selfish boy made stupid through idleness and self-indulgence.  Even what had been clean-cut, attractive, in his face and figure was being marred and coarsened by his slothful habits to an extent that secretly dismayed her; for she had always thought him very handsome; and, with that natural perversity of selection, finding in him a perfect foil to her own character, had been seriously inclined to like him.

Attractions begin in that way, sometimes, where the gentler is the stronger, the frailer, the dominant character; and the root is in the feminine instinct to care for, develop, and make the most of what palpably needs a protectorate.

Without comprehending her own instinct, Mrs. Ascott had found the preliminary moulding of Portlaw an agreeable diversion; had rather taken for granted that she was doing him good; and was correspondingly annoyed when he parted his moorings and started drifting aimlessly as a derelict scow awash, floundering seaward without further notice of the trim little tug standing by and amiably ready to act as convoy.

Now, sitting her saddle in silence she surveyed him, striving to understand him—­his recent indifference, his deterioration, the present figure he was cutting.  And it seemed to her a trifle sad that he had no one to tell him a few wholesome truths.