Lord Romfrey appeared merely inquisitive; his eyebrows were lifted in permanence; his eyes were mild.

She continued:  ’They leave England in a few hours.  They are not likely to return.  I permitted him to address me with the title of countess.’

‘Of Romfrey?’ said the earl.

Rosamund bowed.

His mouth contracted.  She did not expect thunder to issue from it, but she did fear to hear a sarcasm, or that she would have to endure a deadly silence:  and she was gathering her own lips in imitation of his, to nerve herself for some stroke to come, when he laughed in his peculiar close-mouthed manner.

‘I’m afraid you’ve dished yourself.’

‘You cannot forgive me, my lord?’

He indulged in more of his laughter, and abruptly summoning gravity, bade her talk to him of affairs.  He himself talked of the condition of the Castle, and with a certain off-hand contempt of the ladies of the family, and Cecil’s father, Sir John.  ‘What are they to me?’ said he, and he complained of having been called Last Earl of Romfrey.

‘The line ends undegenerate,’ said Rosamund fervidly, though she knew not where she stood.

‘Ends!’ quoth the earl.

‘I must see Stukely,’ he added briskly, and stooped to her:  ’I beg you to drive me to my Club, countess.’

‘Oh! sir.’

‘Once a countess, always a countess!’

‘But once an impostor, my lord?’

‘Not always, we’ll hope.’

He enjoyed this little variation in the language of comedy; letting it drop, to say:  ’Be here to-morrow early.  Don’t chase that family away from the house.  Do as you will, but not a word of Nevil to me:  he’s a bad mess in any man’s porringer; it’s time for me to claim exemption of him from mine.’

She dared not let her thoughts flow, for to think was to triumph, and possibly to be deluded.  They came in copious volumes when Lord Romfrey, alighting at his Club, called to the coachman:  ‘Drive the countess home.’

They were not thoughts of triumph absolutely.  In her cooler mind she felt that it was a bad finish of a gallant battle.  Few women had risen against a tattling and pelting world so stedfastly; and would it not have been better to keep her own ground, which she had won with tears and some natural strength, and therewith her liberty, which she prized?  The hateful Cecil, a reminder of whom set her cheeks burning and turned her heart to serpent, had forced her to it.  So she honestly conceived, owing to the circumstance of her honestly disliking the pomps of life and not desiring to occupy any position of brilliancy.  She thought assuredly of her hoard of animosity toward the scandalmongers, and of the quiet glance she would cast behind on them, and below.  That thought came as a fruit, not as a reflection.

But if ever two offending young gentlemen, nephews of a long-suffering uncle, were circumvented, undermined, and struck to earth, with one blow, here was the instance.  This was accomplished by Lord Romfrey’s resolution to make the lady he had learnt to esteem his countess:  and more, it fixed to him for life one whom he could not bear to think of losing:  and still more, it might be; but what more was unwritten on his tablets.