Caressing her still, Aminta said:  ‘I don’t know whether I embrace a boy.’

‘That idea comes from a man!’ said Mrs. Lawrence.  It was admitted.  The secretary was discussed.

Mrs. Lawrence remarked:  ’Yes, I like talking with him; he’s bright.  You drove him out of me the day I saw him.  Doesn’t he give you the idea of a man who insists on capturing you and lets it be seen he doesn’t care two snaps of a finger?’

Aminta petitioned on his behalf indifferently:  ’He ‘s well bred.’

She was inattentive to Mrs. Lawrence’s answer.  The allusion of the Queen of Blondes had stung her in the unacknowledged regions where women discard themselves and are most sensitive.

‘Decide on coming soon to Lady de Culme,’ said Mrs. Lawrence.  ’Now that her arms are open to you, she would like to have you in them.  She is old—.  You won’t be rigorous? no standing on small punctilios?

She would call, but she does not—­h’m, it is M. le Comte that she does not choose to—­h’m.  But her arms are open to the countess.  It ought to be a grand step.  You may be assured that Lady Charlotte Eglett would not be taken into them.  My great-aunt has a great-aunt’s memory.  The Ormonts are the only explanation—­if it ’s an apology—­she can offer for the behaviour of the husband of the Countess of Ormont.  You know I like him.  I can’t help liking a man who likes me.  Is that the way with a boy, Mr. Secretary?  I must have another talk with the gentleman, my dear.  You are Aminta to me.’

‘Always Aminta to you,’ was the reply, tenderly given.

’But as for comprehending him, I’m as far off that as Lady de Culme, who hasn’t the liking for him I have.’

‘The earl?’ said Aminta, showing by her look that she was in the same position.

Mrs. Lawrence shrugged:  ’I believe men and women marry in order that they should never be able to understand one another.  The riddle’s best read at a moderate distance.  It ’s what they call the golden mean; too close, too far, we’re strangers.  I begin to understand that husband of mine, now we’re on bowing terms.  Now, I must meet the earl to-morrow.  You will arrange?  His hand wants forcing.  Upon my word, I don’t believe it ’s more.’

Mrs. Lawrence contrasted him in her mind with the husband she knew, and was invigorated by the thought that a placable impenetrable giant may often be more pliable in a woman’s hands than an irascible dwarf—­until, perchance, the latter has been soundly cuffed, and then he is docile to trot like a squire, as near your heels as he can get.  She rejoiced to be working for the woman she had fallen in love with.

Aminta promised herself to show the friend a livelier affection at their next meeting.

A seventh letter, signed ‘Adolphus,’ came by post, was read and locked up in her jewel-box.  They were all nigh destruction for a wavering minute or so.  They were placed where they lay because the first of them had been laid there, the box being a strong one, under a patent key, and discovery would mean the terrible.  They had not been destroyed because they had, or seemed to her to have, the language of passion.  She could read them unmoved, and appease a wicked craving she owned to having, and reproached herself with having, for that language.