Robert fell back on the pillow.  Mrs. Boulby wiped her eyes.  Her feelings were overwhelmed with mournful devotion to the passionate young man; and she expressed them practically:  “A rump-steak would never digest in his poor stomach!”

He seemed to be of that opinion too, for when, after lying till eleven, he rose and appeared at the breakfast-table, he ate nothing but crumbs of dry bread.  It was curious to see his precise attention to the neatness of his hat and coat, and the nervous eye he cast upon the clock, while brushing and accurately fixing these garments.  The hat would not sit as he was accustomed to have it, owing to the bruise on his head, and he stood like a woman petulant with her milliner before the glass; now pressing the hat down till the pain was insufferable, and again trying whether it presented him acceptably in the enforced style of his wearing it.  He persisted in this, till Mrs. Boulby’s exclamation of wonder admonished him of the ideas received by other eyes than his own.  When we appear most incongruous, we are often exposing the key to our characters; and how much his vanity, wounded by Rhoda, had to do with his proceedings down at Warbeach, it were unfair to measure just yet, lest his finer qualities be cast into shade, but to what degree it affected him will be seen.

Mrs. Boulby’s persuasions induced him to take a stout silver-topped walking-stick of her husband’s, a relic shaped from the wood of the Royal George; leaning upon which rather more like a Naval pensioner than he would have cared to know, he went forth to his appointment with the lady.

CHAPTER XX

The park-sward of Fairly, white with snow, rolled down in long sweeps to the salt water:  and under the last sloping oak of the park there was a gorse-bushed lane, green in Summer, but now bearing cumbrous blossom—­ like burdens of the crisp snow-fall.  Mrs. Lovell sat on horseback here, and alone, with her gauntleted hand at her waist, charmingly habited in tone with the landscape.  She expected a cavalier, and did not perceive the approach of a pedestrian, but bowed quietly when Robert lifted his hat.

“They say you are mad.  You see, I trust myself to you.”

“I wish I could thank you for your kindness, madam.”

“Are you ill?”

“I had a fall last night, madam.”

The lady patted her horse’s neck.

“I haven’t time to inquire about it.  You understand that I cannot give you more than a minute.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Let us say five exactly.  To begin:  I can’t affect to be ignorant of the business which brings you down here.  I won’t pretend to lecture you about the course you have taken; but, let me distinctly assure you, that the gentleman you have chosen to attack in this extraordinary manner, has done no wrong to you or to any one.  It is, therefore, disgracefully unjust to single him out.  You know he cannot possibly fight you.  I speak plainly.”