We can accommodate our Concert-set, and about thirty or forty more, for as long as they like.  You see, that was my intention—­to be independent of neighbouring society.  Madame Callet guarantees dinners or hot suppers for eighty—­and Armandine is the last person to be recklessly boasting.—­When was it I was thinking last of Armandine?’ He asked himself that, as he rubbed at the back of his head.

Mr. Fenellan was reading his friend’s character by the light of his remarks and in opposition to them, after the critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear:  but it was amiably and trippingly, on the dance of the wine in his veins.

His look, however, was one that reminded; and Mr. Radnor cried:  ’Now! whatever it is!’

‘I had an interview:  I assure you,’ Mr. Fenellan interposed to pacify:  ’the smallest of trifles, and to be expected:  I thought you ought to know it:—­an interview with her lawyer; office business, increase of Insurance on one of her City warehouses.’

’Speak her name, speak the woman’s name; we’re talking like a pair of conspirators,’ exclaimed Mr. Radnor.

‘He informed me that Mrs. Burman has heard of the new mansion.’

‘My place at Lakelands?’

Mr. Radnor’s clear-water eyes hardened to stony as their vision ran along the consequences of her having heard it.

‘Earlier this time!’ he added, thrummed on the table, and thumped with knuckles.  ’I make my stand at Lakelands for good!  Nothing mortal moves me!’

‘That butler of hers—­’

’Jarniman, you mean:  he’s her butler, yes, the scoundrel—­h’m-pah!  Heaven forgive me! she’s an honest woman at least; I wouldn’t rob her of her little:  fifty-nine or sixty next September, fifteenth of the month! with the constitution of a broken drug-bottle, poor soul!  She hears everything from Jarniman:  he catches wind of everything.  All foreseen, Fenellan, foreseen.  I have made my stand at Lakelands, and there’s my flag till it’s hauled down over Victor Radnor.  London kills Nataly as well as Fredi—­and me:  that is—­I can use the words to you—­I get back to primal innocence in the country.  We all three have the feeling.  You’re a man to understand.  My beasts, and the wild flowers, hedge-banks, and stars.  Fredi’s poetess will tell you.  Quiet waters reflecting.  I should feel it in Paris as well, though they have nightingales in their Bois.  It’s the rustic I want to bathe me; and I had the feeling at school, biting at Horace.  Well, this is my Sabine Farm, rather on a larger scale, for the sake of friends.  Come, and pure air, water from the springs, walks and rides in lanes, high sand-lanes; Nataly loves them; Fredi worships the old roots of trees:  she calls them the faces of those weedy sandy lanes.  And the two dear souls on their own estate, Fenellan!  And their poultry, cows, cream.  And a certain influence one has in the country socially.  I make my stand on a home—­not empty punctilio.’