Again her panting impulsiveness ended in extinction of voice, again she was rosily self-conscious, though, this time, not exactly shamefaced; and again the young man felt a sort of surprise as he gazed at her.

“In any case,” he said, standing up and taking a step or two, “an offer of this kind couldn’t be accepted straightaway.  All I can say now is that I’m very grateful to you.  No one ever gave me such a proof of friendship, that’s the simple fact.  It’s uncommonly good of you, Iris—­”

“It’s not uncommonly good of you,” she broke in, still seated, and her arms crossed.  “Do as you like.  You said disagreeable things, and I felt hurt, and when I ask you to make amends in a reasonable way—­”

“Look here,” cried Lashmar, standing before her with his hands in his pockets, “you know perfectly well—­perfectly well—­that, if I accept this offer, you’ll think the worse of me.”

Iris started up.

“It isn’t true!  I shall think the worse of you if you go down to Lady Ogram’s house, and act and speak as if you were independent.  What sort of face will you have when it comes at last to telling her the truth?”

Dyce seemed to find this a powerful argument.  He raised his brows, moved uneasily, and kept silence.

“I shall not think one bit the worse of you,” Iris pursued, impetuously.  “You make me out, after all, to be a silly, ordinary woman, and it’s horribly unjust.  If you go away like this, please never come here again.  I mean what I say.  Never come to see me again!”

Lashmar seemed to hesitate, looked uncomfortable, then stepped back to his chair and sat down.

“That’s right;” said Iris, with quiet triumph.

And she, too, resumed her chair.

CHAPTER VIII

Under the roof at Rivenoak was an attic which no one ever entered.  The last person who had done so was Sir Quentin Ogram; on a certain day in eighteen hundred and—­something, the baronet locked the door and put key into his pocket, and during the more than forty years since elapsed the room had remained shut.  It guarded neither treasure nor dire secret; the hidden contents were merely certain essays in the art of sculpture, sundry shapes in clay and in marble, the work of Sir Quentin himself when a very young man.  Only one of these efforts had an abiding interest; it was a marble bust representing a girl, or young woman, of remarkable beauty, the head proudly poised, the eyes disdainfully direct, on the lips a smile which seemed to challenge the world’s opinion.  Not a refined or nobly suggestive face, but stamped with character, alive with vehement self-consciousness; a face to admire at a distance, not without misgiving as one pictured the flesh and blood original.  Young Quentin had made a fine portrait.  The model was his mistress, and, soon after the bust was finished, she became his wife.