“Very well.”

“Ugh!” You must imagine this sound as something between a grunt and a groan, that the estimable lady gave vent to whenever put out.  It is not capable of being written.  “You might have sent word you were coming.  I should think you frightened your wife to death.”

“Not quite.”

He walked across the room and rang the bell.  Hedges appeared.  It had been the dowager’s pleasure that no one else should serve her at that meal—­perhaps on account of her peculiarities of costume.

“Will you be good enough to pour out the coffee in Maude’s place to-day, Lady Kirton?  She has promised to be down another morning.”

It was making her so entirely and intentionally a guest, as she thought, that Lady Kirton did not like it.  Not only did she fully intend Hartledon House to be her home, but she meant to be its one ruling power.  Keep Maude just now to her invalid fancies, and later to her gay life, and there would be little fear of her asserting very much authority.

“Are you in the habit of serving this sort of breakfast, Hedges?” asked Lord Hartledon; for the board looked almost like an elaborate dinner.

“We have made some difference, my lord, this morning.”

“For me, I suppose.  You need not do so in future.  I have got out of the habit of taking breakfast; and in any case I don’t want this unnecessary display.  Captain Kirton gets up later, I presume.”

“He’s hardly ever up before eleven,” said Hedges.  “But he makes a good breakfast, my lord.”

“That’s right.  Tempt him with any delicacy you can devise.  He wants strength.”

The dowager was fuming.  “Don’t you think I’m capable of regulating these things, Hartledon, I’d beg leave to ask?”

“No doubt.  I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us.  Some tea, Hedges.”

She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him.  There was incipient defiance in his every movement; latent war in his tones.  He was no longer the puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.

Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him.  It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past:  her unjustifiable scheming—­his own miserable weakness.  If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—­felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some trouble to suppress.

He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word, civil on the surface, passing now and then.  The dowager thoroughly entered into her breakfast, and had little leisure for anything else.

“What makes you take nothing?” she asked, perceiving at length that he had only a piece of toast on his plate, and was playing with that.