“There is no need to play our comedy in private,” she said, with cold reproof.  “And I hope that at all times you will use the discretion that is owing to me.”

“If I don’t, I shall deserve to fall into worse difficulties than ever,” cried Lashmar.

“As, for instance, to find yourself under the necessity of making your mock contract a real one—­which would be sufficiently tragic.”

Constance spoke with a laugh, and thereupon, before Dyce could make any rejoinder, walked from the room.

The philosopher stood embarrassed.  “What did she mean by that?” he asked himself.  He had never felt on very solid ground in his dealings with Constance; had never felt sure in his reading of her character, his interpretation of her ways and looks and speeches.  An odd thing that he should have been betrayed by his sense of triumphant diplomacy into that foolish excess.  And he remembered that it was the second such indiscretion, though this time, happily, not so compromising as his youthful extravagance at Alverholme.

What if Lady Ogram, feeling that her end drew near, called for their speedy marriage?  Was it the thought of such possibility that had supplied Constance with her sharp-edged jest?  If she could laugh, the risk did not seem to her very dreadful.  And to him?

He could not make up his mind on the point.

CHAPTER XV

Lord Dymchurch was at a critical moment of his life.

Discontent, the malady of the age, had taken hold upon him.  No ignoble form of the disease; for his mind, naturally in accord with generous thoughts, repelled every suggestion which he recognised as of unworthy origin, and no man saw more clearly how much there was of vanity and of evil in the unrest which rules our time.  He was possessed by that turbid idealism which, in the tumult of a day without conscious guidance, is the peril of gentle souls.  Looking out upon the world, he seemed to himself to be the one idle man in a toiling and aspiring multitude; for, however astray the energy of most, activity was visible on every side, and in activity—­so he told himself—­lay man’s only hope.  He alone did nothing.  Wearing his title like a fool’s cap, he mooned in by-paths which had become a maze.  Was it not the foolish title that bemused and disabled him?  Without it, would he not long ago have gone to work like other men, and had his part in the onward struggle?  Discontented with himself, ill at ease in his social position, reproachfully minded towards the ancestors who had ruined him, he fell into that most dangerous mood of the cultured and conscientious man, a feverish inclination for practical experiment in life.