“You are distressing me terribly,” Dominey confessed, “but all the same, after a somewhat agitated evening I must admit that I find it pleasant to talk with some one who is not wielding the lightnings.  May I have a whisky and soda?”

“Bring me one, too, please,” Caroline begged.  “I fear that it will seriously impair the note which I had intended to strike in our conversation, but I am thirsty.  And a handful of those Turkish cigarettes, too.  You can devote yourself to me with a perfectly clear conscience.  Your most distinguished guest has found a task after his own heart.  He has got Henry in a corner of the billiard-room and is trying to convince him of what I am sure the dear man really believes himself—­that Germany’s intentions towards England are of a particularly dove-like nature.  Your Right Honourable guest has gone to bed, and Eddy Pelham is playing billiards with Mr. Mangan.  Every one is happy.  You can devote yourself to soothing my wounded vanity, to say nothing of my broken heart.”

“Always gibing at me,” Dominey grumbled.

“Not always,” she answered quietly, raising her eyes for a moment.  “There was a time, Everard, before that terrible tragedy—­the last time you stayed at Dunratter—­when I didn’t gibe.”

“When, on the contrary, you were sweetness itself,” he reflected.

She sighed reminiscently.

“That was a wonderful month,” she murmured.  “I think it was then for the first time that I saw traces of something in you which I suppose accounts for your being what you are to-day.”

“You think that I have changed, then?”

She looked him in the eyes.

“I sometimes find it difficult to believe,” she admitted, “that you are the same man.”

He turned away to reach for his whisky and soda.

“As a matter of curiosity,” he asked, “why?”

“To begin with, then,” she commented, “you have become almost a precisian in your speech.  You used to be rather slangy at times.”

“What else?”

“You used always to clip your final g’s.”

“Shocking habit,” he murmured.  “I cured myself of that by reading aloud in the bush.  Go on, please?”

“You carry yourself so much more stiffly.  Sometimes you have the air of being surprised that you are not in uniform.”

“Trifles, all these things,” he declared.  “Now for something serious?”

“The serious things are pretty good,” she admitted.  “You used to drink whiskys and sodas at all hours of the day, and quite as much wine as was good for you at dinner time.  Now, although you are a wonderful host, you scarcely take anything yourself.”

“You should see me at the port,” he told her, “when you ladies are well out of the way!  Some more of the good, please?”

“All your best qualities seem to have come to the surface,” she went on, “and I think that the way you have come back and faced it all is simply wonderful.  Tell me, if that man’s body should be discovered after all these years, would you be charged with manslaughter?”