‘After Easter.  Aunt will be away.’

’Your little friend likes the country.  I’ll go to my house agents.  If there ’s a country house open on the upper Thames, you can have swimming, boating, botanizing . . .’

He saw her throat swallow.  But as he was offering agreeable things he chose to not understand how he was to be compassionate.

‘Steignton?’ she said, and did her cause no good by saying it feebly.

His look of a bygone awake-in-sleep old look, drearily known to her, was like a strip of sunlight on a fortress wall.  It signified, Is the poor soul pushing me back to that again?

She compelled herself to say:  ‘Your tenant there?’

‘Matter of business . . . me and my tenant,’ he remarked.  ’The man pays punctually.’

‘The lease has expired.’

‘Not quite.  You are misinformed.’

‘At Easter.’

‘Ah!  Question of renewing.’

‘You were fond of the place.’

‘I was fond of the place?  Thank Blazes, I’m not what I was!’ He paced about.  ’There’s not a corner of the place that doesn’t screw an eye at me, because I had a dream there.  La gloire!’

The rest he muttered.  ‘These English!’ was heard.  Aminta said:  ’Am I never to see Steignton?’

Lord Ormont invoked the Powers.  He could not really give answer to this female talk of the eternities.

‘Beaten I can never be,’ he said, with instinctive indulgence to the greater creature.  ’But down there at Steignton, I should be haunted by a young donkey swearing himself the fellow I grew up out of.  No doubt of that.  I don’t like him the better for it.  Steignton grimaces at a cavalry officer fool enough at his own risks and penalties to help save India for the English.  Maunderers!  You can’t tell—­they don’t know themselves—­what they mean.  Except that they ’re ready to take anything you hand ’em, and then pipe to your swinging.  I served them well—­and at my age, in full activity, they condemn me to sit and gape!’

He stopped his pacing and gazed on the glass of the window.

‘Would you wish me not to be present at this fencing?’ said Aminta.

‘Dear me! by all means, go, my love,’ he replied.

Any step his Fair Enemy won in the secret game Pull between them, she was undisputedly to keep.

She suggested:  ‘It might lead to unpleasantness.’

‘Of what sort?’

‘You ask?’

He emphasized:  ’Have you forgotten?  Something happened after that last ball at Challis’s Rooms.  Their women as well as their men must be careful not to cross me.’

Aminta had confused notions of her being planted in hostile territory, and torn and knitted, trumpeted to the world as mended, but not honourably mended in a way to stop corridor scandal.  The ball at Challis’s Rooms had been one of her steps won:  it had necessitated a requirement for the lion in her lord to exhibit himself, and she had gained nothing with Society by the step, owing to her poor performance of the lion’s mate.  She had, in other words, shunned the countenance of some scattered people pityingly ready to support her against the deadly passive party known to be Lady Charlotte’s.