Piers tried to laugh; declared he did not know.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you generalise from one or two?” said his hostess, letting her eyelids droop as she observed him lazily.  “Do you know Russian women as well?”

By begging for another cup of tea, and adding a remark on some other subject, Piers evaded this question.

“And what are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Borisoff “Stay here, and write more articles?”

“I’m going to England in a few days for the summer.”

“That’s what I think I shall do.  But I don’t know what part to go to.  Advise me, can you?  Seaside—­no; I don’t like the seaside.  Do you notice how people—­our kind of people, I mean—­are losing their taste for it in England?  It’s partly, I suppose, because of the excursion train.  One doesn’t grudge the crowd its excursion train, but it’s so much nicer to imagine their blessedness than to see it.  Or are you for the other point of view?”

Otway gave an expressive look.

“That’s right.  Oh, the sham philanthropic talk that goes on in England!  How it relieves one to say flatly that one does not love the multitude!—­No seaside, then.  Lakes—­no; Wales—­no; Highlands—­no.  Isn’t there some part of England one would like if one discovered it?”

“Do you want solitude?” asked Piers, becoming more interested.

“Solitude?  H’m!” She handed a box of cigarettes, and herself took one.  “Yes, solitude.  I shall try to get Miss Derwent to come for a time.  New Forest—­no, Please, please, do suggest!  I’m nervous; your silence teases me.”

“Do you know the Yorkshire dales?” asked Otway, watching her as she watched a nice little ring of white smoke from the end of her cigarette.

“No!  That’s an idea.  It’s your own country, isn’t it?”

“But—­how do you know that?”

“Dreamt it.”

“I wasn’t born there, but lived there as a child, and later a little.  You might do worse than the dales, if you like that kind of country.  Wensleydale, for instance.  There’s an old Castle, and a very interesting one, part of it habitable, where you can get quarters.”

“A Castle?  Superb!”

“Where Queen Mary was imprisoned for a time, till she made an escape ——­”

“Magnificent!  Can I have the whole Castle to myself?”

“The furnished part of it, unless someone else has got it already for this summer.  There’s a family, the caretakers, always in possession—­if things are still as they used to be.”

“Write for me at once, will you?  Write immediately!  There is paper on the desk.”

Piers obeyed.  Whilst he sat penning the letter, Mrs. Borisoff lighted a second cigarette, her face touched with a roguish smile.  She studied Otway’s profile for a moment; became grave; fell into a mood of abstraction, which shadowed her features with weariness and melancholy.  Turning suddenly to put a question, Piers saw the change in her look, and was so surprised that he forgot what he was going to say.