Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country-house, they might as well have remained at Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places dear to them in turn.  Such was the plain sense of the surface question.  And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering sensitiveness on her behalf; could not see, that he threw her into situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head; where one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the recollection of two years back, the word ‘Impostor’ had smacked her on both cheeks from her own mouth.

Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the love of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it:  alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are seen, and unaware awaited.

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass.  She could always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and uninquiring.  Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a rattle of Donizetti’s Il segreto to the skylights.

He performed his never-omitted lover’s homage.

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile.  ’A country-house?  We go and see it to-morrow?’

‘And you’ve been pining for a country home, my dear soul.’

’After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to return to.’

’And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of the furniture.’

‘There is the Creckholt . . .’ she had a difficulty in saying.

‘Part of it may do.  Lakelands requires—­but you will see to-morrow.’

After a close shutting of her eyes, she rejoined:  ‘It is not a cottage?’

’Well, dear, no:  when the Slave of the Lamp takes to building, he does not run up cottages.  And we did it without magic, all in a year; which is quite as good as a magical trick in a night.’  He drew her close to him.  ‘When was it my dear girl guessed me at work?’

‘It was the other dear girl.  Nesta is the guesser.’

’You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; and I might have had to fib; and we neither of us like that.’  He noticed a sidling of her look.  ’More than the circumstances oblige:—­to be frank.  But now we can speak of them.  Wait—­and the change comes; and opportunely, I have found.  It’s true we have waited long; my darling has had her worries.  However, it ’s here at last.  Prepare yourself.  I speak positively.  You have to brace up for one sharp twitch—­the woman’s portion! as Natata says—­and it’s over.’  He looked into her eyes for comprehension; and not finding inquiry, resumed:  ’Just in time for the entry into Lakelands.  With the pronouncement of the decree, we present the licence . . . at an altar we’ve stood before, in spirit . . . one of the ladies of your family to support you:—­why not?  Not even then?’