‘I look troubled?’ Victor said laughing, and bethought him of what the trouble might be.  ’City news would not cause the look.  Ah, yes;—­I was talking in the street to a friend of mine on horseback the other day, and he kept noticing his horse’s queer starts.  We spied half a dozen children in the gutter, at the tail of the horse, one of them plucking at a hair.  “Please, sir, may I have a hair out of your horse’s tail?” said the mite.  We patted the poor horse that grew a tail for urchins to pluck at.  Men come to the fathers about their girls.  It’s my belief that mothers more easily say no.  If they learn the word as maids, you’ll say!  However, there’s no fear about my girl.  Fredi’s hard to snare.  And what brings you Cityward?’

’I want to know whether I shall do right in selling out of the Tiddler mine.’

‘You have multiplied your investment by ten.’

‘If it had been thousands!’

’Clearly, you sell; always jump out of a mounted mine, unless you’re at the bottom of it.’

’There are City-articles against the mine this morning—­or I should have been on my way to Whinfold at this moment.  The shares are lower.’

’The merry boys are at work to bring your balloon to the ground, that you may quit it for them to ascend.  Tiddler has enemies, like the best of mines:  or they may be named lovers, if you like.  And mines that have gone up, go down for a while before they rise again; it’s an affair of undulations; rocket mines are not so healthy.  The stories are false, for the time.  I had the latest from Dartrey Fenellan yesterday.  He’s here next month; some time in August.’

‘He is married, is he not?’

‘Was.’

Victor’s brevity sounded oddly to Lady Grace.

‘Is he not a soldier?’ she said.

‘Soldiers and parsons!’ Victor interjected.

Now she saw.  She understood the portent of Mr. Barmby’s hovering offer of the choice of songs, and the recent tremulousness of the welling Bethesda.

But she had come about her own business; and after remarking, that when there is a prize there must be competition, or England will have to lower her flag, she declared her resolve to stick to Tiddler, exclaiming:  ’It’s only in mines that twenty times the stake is not a dream of the past!’

‘The Riviera green field on the rock is always open to you,’ said Victor.

She put out her hand to be taken.  ’Not if you back me here.  It really is not gambling when yours is the counsel I follow.  And if I’m to be a widow, I shall have to lean on a friend, gifted like you.  I love adventure, danger;—­well, if we two are in it; just to see my captain in a storm.  And if the worst happens, we go down together.  It ’s the detestation of our deadly humdrum of modern life; some inherited love of fighting.’

‘Say, brandy.’

‘Does not Mr. Durance accuse you of an addiction to the brandy novel?’