Where I served him perhaps was in showing my resolution to protect him:  he had been insulted before my arrival.  The male relatives of Miss Penrhys did not repeat the insult; they went to Lady Wilts and groaned over their hard luck in not having the option of fighting me.  I was, in her phrase, a new piece on the board, and checked them.  Thus, if they provoked a challenge from me, they brought the destructive odour of powder about the headstrong creature’s name.  I was therefore of use to him so far.  I leaned indolently across the rails of the promenade while she bent and chattered in his ear, and her attendant cousin and cavalier chewed vexation in the form of a young mustachio’s curl.  His horse fretted; he murmured deep notes, and his look was savage; but he was bound to wait on her, and she would not go until it suited her pleasure.  She introduced him to me—­as if conversation could be carried on between two young men feeling themselves simply pieces on the board, one giving check, and the other chafing under it!  I need not say that I disliked my situation.  It was worse when my father took to bowing to her from a distance, unobservant of her hand’s prompt pull at the reins as soon as she saw him.  Lady Wilts had assumed the right of a woman still possessing attractions to exert her influence with him on behalf of the family, for I had done my best to convince her that he entertained no serious thought of marrying, and decidedly would not marry without my approval.  He acted on her advice to discourage the wilful girl.

‘How is it I am so hateful to you?’ Miss Penrhys accosted me abruptly.  I fancied she must have gone mad, and an interrogative frown was my sole answer.

‘Oh!  I hear that you pronounce me everywhere unendurable,’ she continued.  ’You are young, and you misjudge me in some way, and I should be glad if you knew me better.  By-and-by, in Wales.—­Are you fond of mountain scenery?  We might be good friends; my temper is not bad—­at least, I hope not.  Heaven knows what one’s relatives think of one.  Will you visit us?  I hear you have promised your confidante, Lady Wilts.’

At a dancing party where we met, she was thrown on my hands by her ungovernable vehemence, and I, as I had told Lady Wilts, not being able to understand the liking of twenty for forty (fifty would have been nearer the actual mark, or sixty), offered her no lively sympathy.  I believe she had requested my father to pay public court to her.  If Captain DeWitt was to be trusted, she desired him to dance, and dance with her exclusively, and so confirm and defy the tattle of the town; but my father hovered between the dowagers.  She in consequence declined to dance, which was the next worse thing she could do.  An aunt, a miserable woman, was on her left; on her right she contrived, too frequently for my peace of mind, to reserve a vacant place for me, and she eyed me intently across the room, under her persistent brows, until perforce