‘There have been overtures,’ she said.

‘Forgive me; I have scarcely the right to ask . . . speak of it!’

‘My friends may use their right to take an interest in my fortunes.’

’I thought I might, on my way to Paris, turn aside . . . coming by this route.’

‘If you determined not to lose much of your time.’

The coolness of her fencing disconcerted a gentleman conscious of his madness.  She took instant advantage of any circuitous move; she gave him no practicable point.  He was little skilled in the arts of attack, and felt that she checked his impetuousness; respected her for it, chafed at it, writhed with the fervours precipitating him here, and relapsed on his pleasure in seeing her face, hearing her voice.

‘Your happiness, I hope, is the chief thought in such a case,’ he said.

‘I am sure you would consider it.’

‘I can’t quite forget my own.’

‘You compliment an ambitious hostess.’

Dacier glanced across the pastures, ’What was it that tempted you to this place?’

’A poet would say it looks like a figure in the shroud.  It has no features; it has a sort of grandeur belonging to death.  I heard of it as the place where I might be certain of not meeting an acquaintance.’

‘And I am the intruder.’

‘An hour or two will not give you that title.’

‘Am I to count the minutes by my watch?’

’By the sun.  We will supply you an omelette and piquette, and send you back sobered and friarly—­to Caen for Paris at sunset.’

’Let the fare be Spartan.  I could take my black broth with philosophy every day of the year under your auspices.  What I should miss . . .’

‘You bring no news of the world or the House?’

’None.  You know as much as I know.  The Irish agitation is chronic.  The Corn-law threatens to be the same.’

‘And your Chief—­in personal colloquy?’

’He keeps a calm front.  I may tell you:  there is nothing I would not confide to you:  he has let fall some dubious words in private.  I don’t know what to think of them.’

‘But if he should waver?’

‘It’s not wavering.  It’s the openness of his mind.’

’Ah! the mind.  We imagine it free.  The House and the country are the sentient frame governing the mind of the politician more than his ideas.  He cannot think independently of them:—­nor I of my natural anatomy.  You will test the truth of that after your omelette and piquette, and marvel at the quitting of your line of route for Paris.  As soon as the mind attempts to think independently, it is like a kite with the cord cut, and performs a series of darts and frisks, that have the look of wildest liberty till you see it fall flat to earth.  The openness of his mind is most honourable to him.’

‘Ominous for his party.’

‘Likely to be good for his country.’

‘That is the question.’