‘The only approach to a scandal was made by Captain Baskelett.’

’A poor devil locked out of his bed on a Winter’s night hullabaloos with pretty good reason.  I suppose he felt the contrast.’

’My lord, this lady did me the honour to come to me on a visit.  I have not previously presumed to entertain a friend.  She probably formed no estimate of my exact position.’

The earl with a gesture implied Rosamund’s privilege to act the hostess to friends.

‘You invited her?’ he said.

‘That is, I had told her I hoped she would come to England.’

‘She expected you to be at the house in town on her arrival?’

‘It was her impulse to come.’

‘She came alone?’

’She may have desired to be away from her own people for a time:  there may have been domestic differences.  These cases are delicate.’

’This case appears to have been so delicate that you had to lock out a fourth party.’

’It is indelicate and base of Captain Baskelett to complain and to hint.  Nevil had to submit to the same; and Captain Baskelett took his revenge on the housedoor and the bells.  The house was visited by the police next morning.’

‘Do you suspect him to have known you were inside the house that night?’

She could not say so:  but hatred of Cecil urged her past the bounds of habitual reticence to put it to her lord whether he, imagining the worst, would have behaved like Cecil.

To this he did not reply, but remarked, ’I am sorry he annoyed you, ma’am.’

’It is not the annoyance to me; it is the shocking, the unmanly insolence to a lady, and a foreign lady.’

‘That’s a matter between him and Nevil.  I uphold him.’

‘Then, my lord, I am silent.’

Silent she remained; but Lord Romfrey was also silent:  and silence being a weapon of offence only when it is practised by one out of two, she had to reflect whether in speaking no further she had finished her business.

‘Captain Baskelett stays at the Castle?’ she asked.

‘He likes his quarters there.’

’Nevil could not go down to Romfrey, my lord.  He was obliged to wait, and see, and help me to entertain, her brother and her husband.’

’Why, ma’am?  But I have no objection to his making the marquis a happy husband.’

’He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a self-respecting wife.’

‘The parson’s in that fellow!’ Lord Romfrey exclaimed.  ’Now I have the story.  She came to him, he declined the gift, and you were turned into the curtain for them.  If he had only been off with her, he would have done the country good service.  Here he’s a failure and a nuisance; he’s a common cock-shy for the journals.  I’m tired of hearing of him; he’s a stench in our nostrils.  He’s tired of the woman.’

‘He loves her.’