“It must be pretty dull for you, my dear, sometimes.  I wish you saw more people.”

“Oh no, Dad.”

Watching her smile, he thought:  ’That’s not sour grapes”—­What is the trouble, then?’

“I suppose you’ve not heard anything of that fellow Fiorsen lately?”

“Not a word.  But he’s playing again in London this season, I see.”

“Is he?  Ah, that’ll cheer them.”  And he thought:  ’It’s not that, then.  But there’s something—­I’ll swear!’

“I hear that Bryan’s going ahead.  I met a man in town last week who spoke of him as about the most promising junior at the bar.”

“Yes; he’s doing awfully well.”  And a sound like a faint sigh caught his ears.  “Would you say he’s changed much since you knew him, Dad?”

“I don’t know—­perhaps a little less jokey.”

“Yes; he’s lost his laugh.”

It was very evenly and softly said, yet it affected Winton.

“Can’t expect him to keep that,” he answered, “turning people inside out, day after day—­and most of them rotten.  By George, what a life!”

But when he had left her, strolling back in the bright moonlight, he reverted to his suspicions and wished he had said more directly:  “Look here, Gyp, are you worrying about Bryan—­or have people been making themselves unpleasant?”

He had, in these last three years, become unconsciously inimical to his own class and their imitators, and more than ever friendly to the poor—­visiting the labourers, small farmers, and small tradesmen, doing them little turns when he could, giving their children sixpences, and so forth.  The fact that they could not afford to put on airs of virtue escaped him; he perceived only that they were respectful and friendly to Gyp and this warmed his heart toward them in proportion as he grew exasperated with the two or three landed families, and that parvenu lot in the riverside villas.

When he first came down, the chief landowner—­a man he had known for years—­had invited him to lunch.  He had accepted with the deliberate intention of finding out where he was, and had taken the first natural opportunity of mentioning his daughter.  She was, he said, devoted to her flowers; the Red House had quite a good garden.  His friend’s wife, slightly lifting her brows, had answered with a nervous smile:  “Oh! yes; of course—­yes.”  A silence had, not unnaturally, fallen.  Since then, Winton had saluted his friend and his friend’s wife with such frigid politeness as froze the very marrow in their bones.  He had not gone there fishing for Gyp to be called on, but to show these people that his daughter could not be slighted with impunity.  Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again.  But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on her behalf.