“Oh yes.  I’m terrific in Tory melodrama.  I shall bring down the house.”

She turned a curious scrutinizing look on him.

“Yes,” said she, “you’ll bring down the house—­like Samson among the Philistines.”

He returned her look with interest.  “I should immensely like to know,” said he, “what you go in for.  I’m sure you go in for something.”

She looked at her plate.  “Well, I dabble a little in psychology.”

“Oh!” There was a moment’s silence.  “Psychology is a large order,” said Tyson, presently.

“Yes, if you go in deep.  I’m not deep.  I’m perfectly happy when I’ve got hold of the first principles.  It sounds dreadfully superficial, but I’m not interested in anything but principles.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, for in that case you won’t be interested in me.”

She laughed nervously.  She was accustomed to be rallied on her attainments, but never quite after this fashion.

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t any principles.”

She bent her brows; but her eyes were smiling under her frown.

“You really mustn’t say these things here.  We are so dreadfully literal.  We might take you at your word.”

Tyson smiled, showing his rather prominent teeth unpleasantly.

“I wish,” said she, “I knew what you think a country gentleman’s duties really are.”

“Do you?  They are three.  To hunt hard; to shoot straight; and to go to church.”

“I hope you will perform them—­all.”

“I shall—­all.  No—­on second thoughts I draw the line at going to church.  It’s all very well if you’ve got a private chapel, or an easy chair in the chancel, or a family vault you can sit in.  But I detest these modern arrangements; I object to be stuck in a tight position between two boards, with my feet in somebody else’s hat, and somebody else’s feet in mine, and to have people breathing down my collar and hissing and yelling alternately, in my ear.”

Again Miss Batchelor drew her eyebrows together in a friendly frown of warning.  She liked the cosmopolitan Tyson and his reckless speech, and she had her own reasons for wishing him to make a good impression.  But her hints had roused in him the instinct of antagonism, and he went on more recklessly than before.  “No; you are perfectly wrong.  I’m not an interesting atheist.  I have the most beautiful child-like faith in—­”

“The God who was clever enough to make Mr. Nevill Tyson?” said Miss Batchelor, very softly.  She had felt the antagonism, and resented it.

At this point Sir Peter came down with one of those tremendous platitudes that roll conversation out flat.  That was his notion of the duty of a host, to rush in and change the subject just as it was getting exciting.  The old gentleman had destroyed many a promising topic in this way, under the impression that he was saving a situation.

“You’ll be bored to death—­I give you six months,” were Miss Batchelor’s parting words, murmured aside over her shoulder.