At nine o’clock next morning, Lashmar and Constance sat down to breakfast alone.  Mrs. Toplady rarely showed herself much before noon.

“If the sky clears,” said Constance, “Lady Ogram will drive at eleven, and you are invited to accompany her.”

“And you?” asked Dyce.

“I have work for two or three hours.”

Lashmar chipped at an egg, a thoughtful smile upon his countenance.

“Can you tell me anything about Mrs. Toplady?” he inquired.

“Only what I have heard from Lady Ogram.”

Constance sketched a biography.  The lady had been twice married, first in early youth to a man who had nothing, and who became phthisical; during his illness they suffered from dire poverty and, at her husband’s death, the penniless widow received great kindness from Lady Ogram, whose acquaintance she had made accidentally.  Two years afterwards, she married a northern manufacturer of more than twice her age; an instance (remarked Miss Bride) of natural reaction.  It chanced that a Royal Personage, on a certain public occasion, became the guest of the manufacturer, who had local dignities; and so well did Mrs. Toplady play her part of hostess that Royalty deigned to count her henceforth among its friends.  Her husband would have received a title, but an inopportune malady cut short his life.  A daughter of the first marriage still lived; she had wedded into the army, and was little heard of.  Mrs. Toplady, a widow unattached, took her ease in the world.

“She has seven or eight thousand a year,” said Constance, “and spends it all on herself.  Naturally, she is a very polished and ornamental person.”

“Something more than that, I fancy,” returned Dyce, musing.

“Oh, as Lady Ogram would say, she is not a fool.”

Dyce smiled, and let the topic pass.  He was enjoying his breakfast, and, under this genial influence, presently felt moved to intimate speech.

“You live very comfortably here, don’t you?  You have no objection on principle to this kind of thing?”—­his waving hand indicated the well-spread table.

“I?  Certainly not.  Why should I object to civilisation?”

“I’m not quite sure that I have got at your point of view yet,” answered Dyce, good-humouredly.  “You know mine.  The tools to him who can use them.  A breakfast such as this puts us at an advantage over the poorer world for the rest of the day.  But the advantage isn’t stolen.  How came we here?  Is it merely the cost of the railway ticket that transports me from my rasher in a London lodging to reindeer’s tongue and so on in the breakfast-room at Rivenoak?  I fancy not.”

He paused.  Was it wise to hint before Constance that he had lived rather poorly?  He hoped, and believed, that she knew nothing definite as to his circumstances.

“Why, no,” she assented, with a smile.  “I, for example, have perhaps some part in it.”

Dyce gazed at her, surprised at this frankness.