‘Oh, that’s why he hasn’t come yet,’ said she.  ’We’ll sit and talk till he does come.  I don’t wonder if his bile has been stirred.  He can’t oil me to credit what he pumps into others.  His Lady Ormont!  I believe in it less than ever I did.  Morsfield or no Morsfield—­and now the poor wretch has got himself pinned to the plank, like my grandson Bobby’s dragonflies, I don’t want to say anything further of him—­she doesn’t have much of a welcome at Steignton!  If I were a woman to wager as men do, I ’d stake a thousand pounds to five on her never stepping across the threshold of Steignton.  All very well in London, and that place he hires up at Marlow.  He respects our home.  That ’s how I know my brother Rowsley still keeps a sane man.  A fortune on it!—­and so says Mr. Eglett.  Any reasonable person must think it.  He made a fool of some Hampton-Evey at Madrid, if he went through any ceremony—­and that I doubt.  But she and old (what do they call her?) may have insisted upon the title, as much as they could.  He sixty; she under twenty, I’m told.  Pagnell ’s the name.  That aunt of a good-looking young woman sees a noble man of sixty admiring her five feet seven or so—­she’s tall—­of marketable merchandise, and she doesn’t need telling that at sixty he’ll give the world to possess the girl.  But not his family honour!  He stops at that.  Why?  Lord Ormont ’s made of pride!  He’ll be kind to her, he’ll be generous, he won’t forsake her; she’ll have her portion in his will, and by the course of things in nature, she’ll outlive him and marry, and be happy, I hope.  Only she won’t enter Steignton.  You remember what I say.  You ’ll live when I ’m gone.  It ’s the thirst of her life to be mistress of Steignton.  Not she!—­though Lord Ormont would have us all open our doors to her; mine too, now he ’s about it.  He sets his mind on his plan, and he forgets rights and dues—­everything; he must have it as his will dictates.  That ’s how he made such a capital soldier.  You know the cavalry leader he was.  If they’d given him a field in Europe!  His enemies admit that.  Twelve! and my clock’s five minutes or more slow.  What can Rowsley be doing?’

She rattled backward on the scene at Steignton, and her brother’s handsome preservation of his dignity ‘stood it like the king he is!’ and to the Morsfield-May encounter, which had prevented another; and Mrs. May was rolled along in the tide, with a hint of her good reason for liking Lord Ormont; also the change of opinion shown by the Press as to Lord Ormont’s grand exploit.  Referring to it, she flushed and jigged on her chair for a saddle beneath her.  And that glorious Indian adventure warmed her to the man who had celebrated it among his comrades when a boy at school.