These words occupied hardly a minute in the saying, but during that minute Hugh Stanbury held Nora by the hand.  He held it fast.  She would not attempt to withdraw it, but neither would she return his pressure by the muscle of a single finger.  What right had he to press her hand; or to make any sign of love, any pretence of loving, when he had gone out of his way to tell her that she was not good enough for him?  Then he started, and Nora and Priscilla put on their hats and left the house.

‘Let us go to Niddon Park,’ said Nora.

‘To Niddon Park again?’

’Yes; it is so beautiful!  And I should like to see it by the morning light.  There is plenty of time.’

So they walked to Niddon Park in the morning, as they had done on the preceding evening.  Their conversation at first regarded Trevelyan and his wife, and the old trouble; but Nora could not keep herself from speaking of Hugh Stanbury.

‘He would not have come,’ she said, ‘unless Louis had sent him.’

‘He would not have come now, I think.’

’Of course not; why should he before Parliament was hardly over, too?  But he won’t remain in town now, will he?’

’He says somebody must remain and I think he will be in London till near Christmas.’

’How disagreeable!  But I suppose he doesn’t care.  It’s all the same to a man like him.  They don’t shut the clubs up, I dare say.  Will he come here at Christmas?’

‘Either then or for the New Year—­just for a day or two.’

‘We shall be gone then, I suppose?’ said Nora.

‘That must depend on Mr Trevelyan,’ said Priscilla.

’What a life for two women to lead to depend upon the caprice of a man who must be mad!  Do you think that Mr Trevelyan will care for what your brother says to him?’

‘I do not know Mr Trevelyan’.

’He is very fond of your brother, and I suppose men friends do listen to each other.  They never seem to listen to women.  Don’t you think that, after all, they despise women?  They look on them as dainty, foolish things.’

‘Sometimes women despise men,’ said Priscilla.

’Not very often do they?  And then women are so dependent on men.  A woman can get nothing without a man.’

‘I manage to get on somehow,’ said Priscilla.

’No, you don’t, Miss Stanbury, if you think of it.  You want mutton.  And who kills the sheep?’

‘But who cooks it?’

‘But the men-cooks are the best,’ said Nora; ’and the men-tailors, and the men to wait at table, and the men poets, and the men-painters, and the men-nurses.  All the things that women do, men do better.’

‘There are two things they can’t do,’ said Priscilla.

‘What are they?’

‘They can’t suckle babies, and they can’t forget themselves.’

’About the babies, of course not.  As for forgetting themselves I am not quite so sure that I can forget myself.  That is just where your brother went down last night.’