Walking briskly against a cold wind, he busied his imagination about Lady Ogram.  The picture he made to himself of this wealthy and original old lady was very fertile of suggestion; his sanguine temper bore him to heights of brilliant possibility.  Dyce Lashmar had a genius for airy construction; much of his time was spent in deducing imaginary results from some half presented opportunity.  As his fancy wrought, he walked faster and faster, and he reached the vicarage in a physical glow which corresponded to his scintillating state of mind.

Of Constance Bride he thought hardly at all.  She did not interest him; her proximity left him cold.  She might be a useful instrument; apart from his “method,” that was the light in which he regarded all the women he knew.  Experience had taught him that he possessed a certain power over women of a certain kind; it seemed probable that Constance belonged to the class; but this was a fact which had no emotional bearing.  With a moment’s idle wonder he remembered the circumstances of their former parting.  He was then a boy, and who shall account for a boy’s momentary impulses?  Constance was a practical sort of person, and in all likelihood thought no more of that foolish incident than he did.

“Why are you so eccentric in your movements, Dyce?” said Mrs. Lashmar, irritably, when he entered the drawing-room again.  “You write one day that you’re coming in a week or two, and on the next here you are.  How could you know that it was convenient to us to have you just now?”

“The Woolstan boy has a cold,” Dyce replied, “and I found myself free for a few days.  I’m sorry to put you out.”

“Not at all.  I say that it might have done.”

Dyce’s bearing to his mother was decently respectful, but in no way affectionate.  The knowledge that she counted for little or nothing with him was an annoyance, rather than a distress, to Mrs. Lashmar.  With tenderness she could dispense, but the loss of authority wounded her.

Dinner was a rather silent meal.  The vicar seemed to be worrying about something even more than usual.  When they had risen from table, Mrs. Lashmar made the remark which was always forthcoming on these occasions.

“So you are still doing nothing, Dyce?”

“I assure you, I’m very busy,” answered the young man, as one indulgent to an inferior understanding.

“So you always say.  When did you see Lady Susan?”

“Oh, not for a long time.”

“What vexes me is, that you don’t make the slightest use of your opportunities.  It’s really astonishing that, with your talents, you should be content to go on teaching children their A. B. C. You have no energy, Dyce, and no ambition.  By this time you might have been in the diplomatic service, you might have been in Parliament.  Are you going to waste your whole life?”

“That depends on the view one takes of life,” said Dyce, in a philosophical tone which he sometimes adopted—­generally after dinner.  “Why should one always be thinking about ‘getting on?’ It’s the vice of the time.  Why should I elbow and hustle in a vulgar crowd?  A friend of mine, Lord Dymchurch—­”