“With Mrs. Sandys?”

Had she seemed to be in the least affected by their meeting it would have been easy to him to be a contrite man at once; any sign of shame on her part would have filled him with desire to take all the blame upon himself.  Had she cut him dead, he would have begun to respect her.  But she smiled disdainfully only, and stood waking.  She was still, as ever, a cold passion, inviting his warm ones to leap at it.  He shuddered a little, but controlled himself and did not answer her.

“I suppose she is the lady of the arbour?” Lady Pippinworth inquired, with mild interest.

“She is the lady of my heart,” Tommy replied valiantly.

“Alas!” said Lady Pippinworth, putting her hand over her own.

But he felt himself more secure now, and could even smile at the woman for thinking she was able to provoke him.

“Look upon me,” she requested, “as a deputation sent north to discover why you have gone into hiding.”

“I suppose a country life does seem exile to you,” he replied calmly, and suddenly his bosom rose with pride in what was coming.  Tommy always heard his finest things coming a moment before they came.  “If I have retired,” he went on windily, “from the insincerities and glitter of life in town,”—­but it was not his face she was looking at, it was his waist,—­“the reason is obvious,” he rapped out.

She nodded assent without raising her eyes.

Yet he still controlled himself.  His waist, like some fair tortured lady of romance, was calling to his knighthood for defence, but with the truer courage he affected not to hear.  “I am in hiding, as you call it,” he said doggedly, “because my life here is such a round of happiness as I never hoped to find on earth, and I owe it all to my wife.  If you don’t believe me, ask Lord or Lady Rintoul, or any other person in this countryside who knows her.”

But her Ladyship had already asked, and been annoyed by the answer.

She assured Tommy that she believed he was happy.  “I have often heard,” she said musingly, “that the stout people are the happiest.”

“I am not so stout,” he barked.

“Now I call that brave of you,” said she, admiringly.  “That is so much the wisest way to take it.  And I am sure you are right not to return to town after what you were; it would be a pity.  Somehow it”—­and again her eyes were on the wrong place—­“it does not seem to go with the books.  And yet,” she said philosophically, “I daresay you feel just the same?”

“I feel very much the same,” he replied warningly.

“That is the tragedy of it,” said she.

She told him that the new book had brought the Tommy Society to life again.  “And it could not hold its meetings with the old enthusiasm, could it,” she asked sweetly, “if you came back?  Oh, I think you act most judiciously.  Fancy how melancholy if they had to announce that the society had been wound up, owing to the stoutness of the Master.”