“Try her with a punt and a concertina after dinner,” Lady Cynthia suggested.  “After all, I came down here to better my acquaintance with my host.  You flirted with me disgracefully when I was a debutante, and have never taken any notice of me since.  I hate infidelity in a man.  Sir Timothy, I shall devote myself to you.  Can you play a concertina?”

“Where the higher forms of music are concerned,” he replied, “I have no technical ability.  I should prefer to sit at your feet.”

“While I punt, I suppose?”

“There are backwaters,” he suggested.

Lady Cynthia sipped her cocktail appreciatively.

“I wonder how it is,” she observed, “that in these days, although we have become callous to everything else in life, cocktails and flirtations still attract us.  You shall take me to a backwater after dinner, Sir Timothy.  I shall wear my silver-grey and take an armful of those black cushions from the drawing-room.  In that half light, there is no telling what success I may not achieve.”

Sir Timothy sighed.

“Alas!” he said, “before dinner is over you will probably have changed your mind.”

“Perhaps so,” she admitted, “but you must remember that Mr. Ledsam is my only alternative, and I am not at all sure that he likes me.  I am not sufficiently Victorian for his taste.”

The dressing-bell rang.  Sir Timothy passed his arm through Francis’.

“The sentimental side of my domain;” he said, “the others may show you.  My rose garden across the stream has been very much admired.  I am now going to give you a glimpse of The Walled House, an edifice the possession of which has made me more or less famous.”

He led the way through a little shrubbery, across a further strip of garden and through a door in a high wall, which he opened with a key attached to his watch-chain.  They were in an open park now, studded with magnificent trees, in the further corner of which stood an imposing mansion, with a great domed roof in the centre, and broad stone terraces, one of which led down to the river.  The house itself was an amazingly blended mixture of old and new, with great wings supported by pillars thrown out on either side.  It seemed to have been built without regard to any definite period of architecture, and yet to have attained a certain coherency—­a far-reaching structure, with long lines of outbuildings.  In the park itself were a score or more of horses, and in the distance beyond a long line of loose boxes with open doors.  Even as they stood there, a grey sorrel mare had trotted up to their side and laid her head against Sir Timothy’s shoulder.  He caressed her surreptitiously, affecting not to notice the approach of other animals from all quarters.

“Let me introduce you to The Walled House,” its owner observed, “so called, I imagine, because this wall, which is a great deal older than you or I, completely encloses the estate.  Of course, you remember the old house, The Walled Palace, they called it?  It belonged for many years to the Lynton family, and afterwards to the Crown.”