‘Sheer dotage.  I don’t deny she’s a handsome young woman.’

’You’ll have to admit that Lady Ormont takes her place in our family with the best we can name.’

‘You insult my ears, Rowsley.’

‘The world will say it when it has the honour of her acquaintance.’

‘An honour suspiciously deferred.’

‘That’s between the world and me.’

’Set your head to work, you’ll screw the world to any pitch you like—­ that I don’t need telling.’

Lord Ormont’s head approved the remark.

‘Now,’ said Lady Charlotte, ’you won’t get the Danmores, the Dukerlys, the Carminters, the Oxbridges any more than you get me.’

’You are wrong, ma’am.  I had yesterday a reply from Lady Danmore to a communication of mine.’

’It ’s thickening.  But while I stand, I stand for the family; and I ’m not in it, and while I stand out of it, there ’s a doubt either of your honesty or your sanity.’

‘There’s a perfect comprehension of my sister!’

’I put my character in the scales against your conduct, and your Countess of Ormont’s reputation into the bargain.’

’You have called at her house; it ’s a step.  You ’ll be running at her heels next.  She ‘s not obdurate.’

’When you see me running at her heels, it’ll be with my head off.  Stir your hardest, and let it thicken.  That man Morsfield’s name mixed up with a sham Countess of Ormont, in the stories flying abroad, can’t hurt anybody.  A true Countess of Ormont—­we ‘re cut to the quick.’

’We ‘re cut!  Your quick, Charlotte, is known to court the knife.’

Letters of the morning’s post were brought in.

The earl turned over a couple and took up a third, saying:  ’I ’ll attend to you in two minutes’; and thinking once more:  Queer world it is, where, when you sheath the sword, you have to be at play with bodkins!

Lady Charlotte gazed on the carpet, effervescent with retorts to his last observation, rightly conjecturing that the letter he selected to read was from ‘his Aminta.’

The letter apparently was interesting, or it was of inordinate length.  He seemed still to be reading.  He reverted to the first page.

At the sound of the paper, she discarded her cogitations and glanced up.  His countenance had become stony.  He read on some way, with a sudden drop on the signature, a recommencement, a sound in the throat, as when men grasp a comprehensible sentence of a muddled rigmarole and begin to have hopes of the remainder.  But the eye on the page is not the eye which reads.

‘No bad news, Rowsley?’

The earl’s breath fell heavily.

Lady Charlotte left her chair, and walked about the room.

’Rowsley, I ‘d like to hear if I can be of use.’

‘Ma’am?’ he said; and pondered on the word ‘use,’ staring at her.

’I don’t intend to pry.  I can’t see my brother look like that, and not ask.’