Plantagenet Palliser skimmed through his little book, and probably learned something.  When he put it down he sipped a cup of tea, and remarked to Lady de Courcy that he believed it was only twelve miles to Silverbridge.

“I wish it was a hundred and twelve,” said the countess.

“In that case I should be forced to start to-night,” said Mr Palliser.

“Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve,” said Lady de Courcy.

“In that case I should not have come at all,” said Mr Palliser.  He did not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.

“The young men are becoming absolute bears,” said the countess to her daughter Margaretta.

He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find himself standing close to Lady Dumbello:  close to her, and without any other very near neighbour.

“I should hardly have expected to find you here,” he said.

“Nor I you,” she answered.

“Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes.”

“I am not near mine.”

“I meant Plumstead; your father’s place.”

“Yes; that was my home once.”

“I wish I could show you my uncle’s place.  The castle is very fine, and he has some good pictures.”

“So I have heard.”

“Do you stay here long?”

“Oh, no.  I go to Cheshire the day after to-morrow.  Lord Dumbello is always there when the hunting begins.”

“Ah, yes; of course.  What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do!  His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?”

“I don’t think they ever do, much.”

After that Mr Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed the rest of the evening in silence.  It is to be hoped that they both were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.

But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a different light by the stern moralists of that house.

“By Jove!” said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr Gresham, “I wonder how Dumbello likes it.”

“It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily.”

“There are some men who will take anything easily,” said George, who, since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such wicked things.

“She’s beginning to come out a little,” said Lady Clandidlem to Lady de Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a fire in some back sitting-room.  “Still waters always run deep, you know.”

“I shouldn’t at all wonder if she were to go off with him,” said Lady de Courcy.

“He’ll never be such a fool as that,” said Lady Clandidlem.

“I believe men will be fools enough for anything,” said Lady de Courcy.  “But, of course, if he did, it would come to nothing afterwards.  I know one who would not be sorry.  If ever a man was tired of a woman, Lord Dumbello is tired of her.”