In truth, was she not unjust?  Here was an offending son freely forgiven.  Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family and permitted to stand upon her qualities.  Who would have done more—­or as much?  This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have fought it.  All the people of position that he was acquainted with would have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly.  But while the baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional education his son had received.  He, took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his System when it was absolutely on trial.  False to his son it could not be said that he had been false to his System he was.  Others saw it plainly, but he had to learn his lesson by and by.

Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table, saying, “Well! well!” She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and drew forth a little book she recognized.  “Ha! what is this?” she said.

“Benson returned it this morning,” he informed her.  “The stupid fellow took it away with him—­by mischance, I am bound to believe.”

It was nothing other than the old Note-book.  Lady Blandish turned over the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.

She read:  “A maker of Proverbs—­what is he but a narrow mind with the mouthpiece of narrower?”

“I do not agree with that,” she observed.  He was in no humour for argument.

“Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?”

He merely said:  “Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings.  A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority rest there content:  can the keeper of such a house be flattered by his company?”

She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again.  There must be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and admirable aptitude.

Further she read, “Which is the coward among us?—­He who sneers at the failings of Humanity!”

“Oh! that is true!  How much I admire that!” cried the dark-eyed dame as she beamed intellectual raptures.

Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him:  “There is no more grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the mercy of his feelings.”

“He must have written it,” she thought, “when he had himself for an example—­strange man that he is!”

Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly insubordinate.  She had once been fairly conquered:  but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive.  The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands.  Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady’s allegiance was his for ever.  The trial was at hand.

She said again:  “He is not coming to-night,” and the baronet, on whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past, quietly added:  “He is come.”