She looked straight at Weyburn.  ’If I were a younger woman I could kiss you for it.’

He bowed to her very gratefully.

’Remember, my lady, there’s a good deal of the Reformer in that definition.’

’I stick to my class.  But they shall hear a true word when there’s one abroad, I can tell them.  That reminds me—­you ought to have asked; let me tell you I’m friendly with the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey.  We had a wrestle for half an hour, and I threw him and helped him up, and he apologized for tumbling, and I subscribed to one of his charities, and gave up about the pew, but had an excuse for not sitting under the sermon.  A poor good creature.  He ’s got the aptitudes for his office.  He won’t do much to save his Church.  I knew another who had his aptitude for the classics, and he has mounted.  He was my tutor when I was a girl.  He was fond of declaiming passages from Lucian and Longus and Ovid.  One day he was at it with a piece out of Daphnis and Chloe, and I said, “Now translate.”  He fetched a gurgle to say he couldn’t, and I slapped his check.  Will you believe it? the man was indignant.  I told him, if he would like to know why I behaved in “that unmaidenly way,” he had better apply at home.  I had no further intimations of his classical aptitudes; but he took me for a cleverer pupil than I was.  I hadn’t a notion of the stuff he recited.  I read by his face.  That was my aptitude—­always has been.  But think of the donkeys parents are when they let a man have a chance of pouring his barley-sugar and sulphur into the ears of a girl.  Lots of girls have no latent heckles and prickles to match his villany.—­There’s my brother come back to breakfast from a round.  You and I ’ll have a drive before lunch, and a ride or a stroll in the afternoon.  There’s a lot to see.  I mean you to get the whole place into your head.  I ’ve ordered the phaeton, and you shall take the whip, with me beside you.  That’s how my husband and I spent three-quarters of our honeymoon.’

Each of the three breakfasted alone.

They met on the terrace.  It was easily perceived that Lord Ormont stood expecting an assault at any instant; prepared also to encounter and do battle with his redoubtable sister.  Only he wished to defer the engagement.  And he was magnanimous:  he was in the right, she in the wrong; he had no desire to grapple with her, fling and humiliate.  The Sphinx of Mrs. Pagnell had been communing with himself unwontedly during the recent weeks.

What was the riddle of him?  That, he did not read.  But, expecting an assault, and relieved by his sister Charlotte’s departure with Weyburn, he went to the drawing-room, where he had seen her sniff her strong suspicions of a lady coming to throne it.  Charlotte could believe that he flouted the world with a beautiful young woman on his arm; she would not believe him capable of doing that in his family home and native county; so, then, her shrewd wits had nothing or little to learn.  But her vehement fighting against facts; her obstinate aristocratic prejudices, which he shared; her stinger of a tongue:  these in ebullition formed a discomforting prospect.  The battle might as well be conducted through the post.  Come it must!