“I made it myself.”

Ah!  A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her interest in life.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” he said; “and drink that up.  I want to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn’t waste life; it doesn’t do.  There’s a new Marguerite to-night; let’s hope she won’t be fat.  And Mephisto—­anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the Devil I can’t imagine.”

But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words:  “You are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!” Why!  Who wouldn’t be!  He would have liked to stay up another day and take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her to death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to come then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a month.  It would be something.  That little Mam’zelle Beauce wouldn’t like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.

He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:  ‘Drive me to Chelsea.’  But his sense of proportion was too strong.  Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too, was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that there was any cupboard love in his little sweet—­she was a bundle of affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had, if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense of property, poor thing!  Besides, he had not breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he—­sufficient unto the day was the good thereof.

In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made ‘jubey’ his drive home.  All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and walk up through the fields at her side.  He had intended to consult the doctor about his fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did not want to be told of an infirmity—­if there were one, could not afford to hear of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.  And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to his son.  It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this silence was due to consideration for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he did not pause to consider.