“An economical man,” said Fellingham, with sedate impatience.

“My dear sir, I’m heartily obliged to you for your assistance,” returned Van Diemen.  “Here she is.”

Annette had come out of the gate in the flint wall.  She started slightly on seeing Herbert, whom she had taken for a coastguard, she said.  He bowed.  He kept his head bent, peering at her intrusively.

“It’s the air on champagne,” Van Diemen said, calling on his lungs to clear themselves and right him.  “I was n’t a bit queer in the house.”

“The air on Tinman’s champagne!” said Fellingham.

“It must be like the contact of two hostile chemical elements.”

Annette walked faster.

They descended from the shingle to the scant-bladed grass-sweep running round the salted town-refuse on toward Elba.  Van Diemen sniffed, ejaculating, “I’ll be best man with Mart Tinman about this business!  You’ll stop with us, Mr.——­what’s your Christian name?  Stop with us as long as you like.  Old friends for me!  The joke of it is that Nelson was my man, and yet I went and enlisted in the cavalry.  If you talk of chemical substances, old Mart Tinman was a sneak who never cared a dump for his country; and I’m not to speak a single sybbarel about that..... over there . . .  Australia . . .  Gippsland!  So down he went, clean over.  Very sorry for what we have done.  Contrite.  Penitent.”

“Now we feel the wind a little,” said Annette.

Fellingham murmured, “Allow me; your shawl is flying loose.”

He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said, “One sign!  It’s not true?  A word!  Do you hate me?”

“Thank you very much, but I am not cold,” she replied and linked herself to her father.

Van Diemen immediately shouted, “For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly boys!  It’s the air on the champagne.  And hang me,” said he, as they entered the grounds of Elba, “if I don’t walk over my property.”

Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.

“No! my Lord!  I’ll see what I sold you for!” he cried.  “I’m an owner of the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than Napoleon Bonaparty.  But I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard:  your mother was never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself called squire in Old England.  And a convict he was, for he did wrong once, but he worked his redemption.  And the smell of my own property makes me feel my legs again.  And I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private:  Mart Tinman’s ideas of wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I’m bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he’ll find two to one against him in our town council.  I love my country, but hang me if I don’t purify it—­”

Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette: