He was not jesting.  All the man’s pride rose to assert dominion.  The prime characteristic of his nation, that personal arrogance which is the root of English freedom, which accounts for everything best, and everything worst, in the growth of English power, possessed him to the exclusion of all less essential qualities.  He was the subduer amazed by improbable defiance.  He had never seen himself in such a situation it was as though a British admiral on his ironclad found himself mocked by some elusive little gunboat, newly invented by the condemned foreigner.  His intellect refused to acknowledge the possibility of discomfiture; his soul raged mightily against the hint of bafflement.  Humour would not come to his aid; the lighter elements of race were ousted; he was solid insolence, wooden-headed self-will.

Irene had risen.

“I am not feeling quite myself.  I have said all there is to be said, and I must beg you to excuse me.”

“You should have begun by saying that.  It is what I insisted upon.”

“Shall we shake hands, Mr. Jacks?”

“To be sure!”

“It is good-bye.  You understand me?  If, after this, you imagine an engagement between us, you have only yourself to blame.”

“I take the responsibility.”  He released her hand, and made a stiff bow.  “In three days, I shall call.”

You will not see me.”

“Perhaps not.  Then, three days later.  Nothing whatever is changed between us.  A little discussion of this sort is all to the good.  Plainly, you have thought me a much weaker man than I am:  when that error of judgment is removed, our relations will be better than ever.”

The temptation to say one word more overcame Irene’s finer sense of the becoming.  Jacks had already taken his hat, and was again bowing, when she spoke.

“You are so sure that your will is stronger than mine?”

“Perfectly sure,” he replied, with superb tranquillity.

No one had ever seen, no one again would ever see, that face of high disdainful beauty, pain-stricken on the fair brow, which Irene for a moment turned upon him.  As he withdrew, the smile that lurked behind her scorn glimmered forth for an instant, and passed in the falling of a tear.

She went to her room, and lay down.  The sleep she had not dared to hope for fell upon her whilst she was trying to set her thoughts in order.  She slept until eight o’clock; her headache was gone.

Neither with her father, nor with Olga, did she speak of what had passed.

Before going to bed, she packed carefully a large dress-basket and a travelling-bag, which a servant brought down for her from the box-room.  Again she slept, but only for an hour or two, and at seven in the morning she rose.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The breakfast hour was nine o’clock.  Dr. Derwent, as usual, came down a few minutes before, and turned over the letters lying for him on the table.  Among them he found an envelope addressed in a hand which looked very much like Irene’s; it had not come by post.  As he was reading the note it contained, Eustace and Olga Hannaford entered together, talking.  He bade them good-morning, and all sat down to table.