Lady Mabel had fluttered about him on his first coming, and had been very gracious, doing the part of an old friend.  ’There is to be a big shooting tomorrow,’ she said, in the presence of Mrs Jones.

‘If it is to come to that,’ he said, ’I might as well go back to Dobbydom.’

‘You may shoot if you like,’ said Mabel.

‘I haven’t even brought a gun with me.’

‘Then we’ll have a walk,—­a whole lot of us,’ she said.

In the evening about an hour before dinner Silverbridge and Lady Mabel were seated together on the bank of a little stream which ran on the other side of the road, but on a spot not more than a furlong from the hall-door.  She had brought him there, but she had done so without any definite scheme.  She had made no plan of campaign for the evening, having felt relieved when she found herself able to postpone the project of her attack till the morrow.  Of course there must be an attack, but how it should be made she had never the courage to tell herself.  The great women of the world, the Semiramises, the Pocohontas, the Ida Pfeiffers, and the Charlotte Cordays, had never been wanting to themselves when the moment for action came.  Now she was pleased to have this opportunity added to her; this pleasant minute in which some soft preparatory word might be spoken; but the great effort should be made on the morrow.

‘Is not this nicer than shooting with Mr Dobbes?’ she asked.

‘A great deal nicer.  Of course I am bound to say so.’

’But in truth, I want to find out what you really like.  Men are so different.  You need not pay me any compliment; you know that well enough.’

‘I like you better than Dobbes,—­if you mean that.’

‘Even so much is something.’

‘But I am fond of shooting.’

‘Only a man may have enough of it.’

’Too much, if he is subject to Dobbes, as Dobbes likes them to be.  Gerald likes it.’

‘Did you think it odd,’ she said after a pause, ’that I should ask you to come over again?’

‘Was it odd?’ he replied.

’That is as you may take it.  There is certainly no other man in the world to whom I would have done it.’

‘Not to Tregear?’

‘Yes,’ she said; ’yes,—­to Tregear, could I have been as sure of a welcome for him as I am for you.  Frank is in all respects the same as a brother to me.  That would not have seemed odd;—­I mean to myself.’

‘And has this been—­odd,—­to yourself?’

’Yes.  Not that anybody has felt it.  Only I,—­and perhaps you.  You felt it so?’

’Not especially.  I thought you were a good fellow.  I have always thought that;—­except when you made me take back the ring.’

‘Does that still fret you?’

’No man likes to take back a thing.  It makes him seem to have been awkward and stupid in giving it.’

‘It was the value—­’

‘You should have left me to judge of that.’