“All the world knows that,” she answered.  “He married an American, one of William Hunter’s daughters.”

“Who has now, I understand, left him?” Lady Jane shrugged her shoulders.

“I do not discuss Mr. Tallente’s matrimonial affairs with him.”

“Surely,” her mother remarked acidly, “in view of your growing intimacy they are of some interest to you both?”

Jane was silent for a moment.

“Just what have you come to say, mother?” she asked, looking up at her, clear-eyed and composed.  “Better let’s get it over.”

The Duchess cleared her throat.

“Jane,” she said, “we have become reconciled, your father and I, against our wills, to your strange political views and the isolation in which you choose to live, but when your eccentricities lead you to a course of action which makes you the target for scandal, your family protests.  I have come to beg that this intimacy of yours with Mr. Tallente should cease.”

“Mother,” Jane replied, “for years after I left the schoolroom I subjected myself to your guidance in these matters.  I went through three London seasons and made myself as agreeable as possible to whatever you brought along and called a man.  At the end of that time I revolted.  I am still in revolt.  Mr. Tallente interests me more than any man I know and I shall not give up my friendship with him.”

“Your aunt tells me that Colonel Fosbrook wants to marry you.”

“He has mentioned the fact continually,” Jane assented.  “Colonel Fosbrook is a very pleasant person who does not appeal to me in the slightest as a husband.”

“The Fosbrooks are one of our oldest families,” the Duchess said severely.  “Arnold Fosbrook is very wealthy and the connection would be most desirable.  You are twenty-nine years old, Jane, and you ought to marry.  You ought to have children and bring them up to defend the order in which you were born.”

“Mother dear,” Jane declared, smiling, “this conversation had better cease.  Thanks to dear Aunt Jane, I have an independent fortune, Woolhanger, and my little house here.  I have adopted an independent manner of life and I have not the least idea of changing it.  You have three other daughters and they have all married to your complete satisfaction.  I don’t think that I shall ever be a very black sheep but you must look upon me as outside the fold.—­I hope you will stay to lunch.  Colonel Fosbrook is bringing his sister and the Princess is coming.”

The Duchess rose to her feet.  The family dignity justified itself in her cold withdrawal.

“Thank you, Jane,” she said, “I am engaged.  I am glad to know, however, that you still have one or two respectable friends.”

The setting was the same only the atmosphere seemed somehow changed when Jane received her second visitor that day.  She was waiting for him in the small sitting room into which no other visitor save members of the family were ever invited.  There was a comfortable fire burning, the roses which had come from him a few hours before were everywhere displayed, and Jane herself, in a soft brown velvet gown, rose to her feet, comely and graceful, to welcome him.