A lady stood among her boxes below, as he descended the stairs to cross the hall.  He knew her for the person Lady Charlotte called “the woman’s aunt,” whom Lord Ormont could not endure—­a forgiven old enemy, Mrs. Nargett Pagnell.

He saluted.  She stared, and corrected her incivility with “Ah, yes,” and a formal smile.

If not accidentally delayed on her journey, she had been needlessly the cause why Lord Ormont hugged his Club during the morning and afternoon.  Weyburn was pushed to think of the matter by remembrance of his foregone resentment at her having withdrawn Aminta from Miss Vincent’s three days earlier than the holiday time.  The resentment was over; but a germ of it must have sprang from the dust to prompt the kindling leap his memory took, out of all due connection; like a lightning among the crags.  It struck Aminta smartly.  He called to mind the conversation at table yesterday.  Had she played on Lord Ormont’s dislike of the aunt to drive him forth for some purpose of her own?  If so, the little trick had been done with deplorable spontaneity or adeptness of usage.  What was the purpose?—­to converse with an old acquaintance, undisturbed by Lord Ormont and her aunt?  Neatly done, supposing the surmise correct.

But what was there in the purpose?  He sifted rapidly for the gist of the conversation; reviewed the manner of it, the words, the sound they had, the feelings they touched; then owned that the question could not be answered.  Owning, further, that the recurrence of these idiotic speculations, feelings, questions, wrote him down as both dull fellow and impertinent, he was unabled to restore Aminta to the queenly place she took above the schoolmaster, who was very soon laughing at his fever or flash of the afternoon.  The day had brought a great surprise, nothing more.  Twenty minutes of fencing in the a salle d’armes of an Italian captain braced him to health, and shifted scenes of other loves, lighter loves, following the Browny days—­not to be called loves; in fact; hardly beyond inclinations.  Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity.  To meet a married woman, and be mooning over her because she gave him her eyes and her handwriting when a girl, was enough to rouse an honest fellow’s laugh at himself, in the contemplation of his intermediate amorous vagabondage.  Had he ever known the veritable passion after Browny sank from his ken?  Let it be confessed, never.  His first love was his only true love, despite one shuddering episode, oddly humiliating to recollect, though he had not behaved badly.  So, then, by right of his passion, thus did eternal justice rule it:  that Browny belonged, to Matey Weyburn, Aminta to Lord Ormont.  Aminta was a lady blooming in the flesh, Browny was the past’s pale phantom; for which reason he could call her his own, without harm done to any one, and with his usual appetite for dinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever the meal supplied by the hour.