She persuaded him to row her cut one evening on a lake by which they were spending a few days.  Wilfrid, suspecting that she aimed at a tete-a-tete, proposed that his father should accompany them.  Mrs. Rossall overruled the suggestion.

‘How wonderfully you are picking up,’ she said, after watching him pull for a few minutes.  ’Do you know, Wilf, your tendency is to stoutness; in a few years you will be portly, if you live too sedentary a life.’

He looked annoyed, and by so doing gratified her.  She proceeded.

’What do you think I overheard one of our spectacled friends say this morning—­“Sehen Sie mal,”—­you were walking at a little distance—­“da haben Sie das Muster des englischen Aristokraten. O, der gute, schlichte Junge!"’

Wilfrid had been working up his German.  He stopped rowing, red with vexation.

‘That is a malicious invention,’ he declared.

‘Nothing of the kind!  The truth of the remark struck me.’

‘I am obliged to you.’

’But, my dear boy, what is there to be offended at?  The man envied you with all his heart; and it is delightful to see you begin to look so smooth about the cheeks.’

‘I am neither an aristocrat, nor schlicht!’

’An aristocrat to the core.  I never knew any one so sensitive on points of personal dignity, so intolerant of difference of opinion in others, so narrowly self-willed!  Did you imagine yourself to have the air of a hero of romance, of the intense school?’

Wilfrid looked into her eyes and laughed.

’That is your way of saying that you think my recent behaviour incongruous.  You wish to impress upon me how absurd I look from the outside?’

‘It is my way of saying that I am sorry for you.’

He laughed again.

‘Then the English aristocrat is an object of your pity?’

‘Certainly; when he gets into a false position.’

’Ah!—­well, suppose we talk of something else.  Look at the moon rising over that shoulder of the hill.’

’That, by way of proving that you are romantic.  No, we won’t talk of something else.  What news have you from England?’

‘None,’ he replied, regarding the gleaming drops that fell from his suspended oar.

‘And you are troubled that the post brings you nothing?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Your emotions are on the surface.’

He made no reply.

‘Ah!’ Mrs. Rossall sighed, ’what a pity you are so independent.  I often think a man’s majority ought to come ten years later than it does.  Most of you are mere boys till thirty at least, and you go and do things that you repent all the rest of your lives.  Dare you promise to come to me in ten years and tell me with complete frankness what you think of—­a certain step?’

He smiled scornfully.

‘Certainly; let us register the undertaking.’