She was really—­a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock afterwards to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of putting it.

Fitted her like a skin—­tight as a drum; that was how he liked ’em, all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He gazed at Mrs. Septimus Small, who took after James—­long and thin.

“There’s style about her,” he went on, “fit for a king!  And she’s so quiet with it too!”

“She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,” drawled Aunt Hester from her corner.

Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.

“What’s that?” he said.  “I know a—­pretty—­woman when I see one, and all I can say is, I don’t see the young man about that’s fit for her; but perhaps—­you—­do, come, perhaps—­you-do!”

“Oh?” murmured Aunt Hester, “ask Juley!”

Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed airing had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes closed, a life-time of deportment alone keeping his tall and bulky form from falling askew.

Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a stout gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for his knees were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same position.  He had assumed his fur coat, to guard against the draughts of the unfinished house.

The staircase—­he said—­was handsome! the baronial style!  They would want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between the columns of the doorway into the inner court, and held out his cane inquiringly.

What was this to be—­this vestibule, or whatever they called it?  But gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.

“Ah! the billiard-room!”

When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he turned to Irene: 

“Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard table here!”

Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun’s coif across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She would take his advice he saw.

He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described as “spacious”; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps, Bosinney going first with a light.

“You’ll have room here,” he said, “for six or seven hundred dozen—­a very pooty little cellar!”

Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse below, Swithin came to a stop.

“There’s a fine view from here,” he remarked; “you haven’t such a thing as a chair?”

A chair was brought him from Bosinney’s tent.

“You go down,” he said blandly; “you two!  I’ll sit here and look at the view.”