Of course, she had moments of what I should call “grace,” and she would call insanity, when she wondered for a little while whether to be sensible was the highest thing in life; but her general attitude to these was as it would be towards temptation of any other kind.  To be sensible, she would say, was to be successful and effective; to be otherwise was to fail and to be ineffective.

Very well, then.

* * * * *

At the beginning of September Dick Guiseley came to Merefield to shoot grouse.  The grouse, as I think I have already remarked, were backward this year, and, after a kind of ceremonial opening, to give warning as it were, on the twelfth of August, they were left in peace.  Business was to begin on the third, and on the evening of the second Dick arrived.

He opened upon the subject that chiefly occupied his thoughts just now with Archie that night when Lord Talgarth had gone to bed.  They were sitting in the smoking-room, with the outer door well open to admit the warm evening air.  They had discussed the prospects of grouse next day with all proper solemnity, and Archie had enumerated the people who were to form their party.  The Rector was coming to shoot, and Jenny was to ride out and join them at lunch.

Then Archie yawned largely, finished his drink, and took up his candle.

“Oh! she’s coming, is she?” said Dick meditatively.

Archie struck a match.

“How’s Frank?” went on Dick.

“Haven’t heard from him.”

“Where is the poor devil?”

“Haven’t an idea.”

Dick emitted a monosyllabic laugh.

“And how’s she behaving?”

“Jenny?  Oh! just as usual.  She’s a sensible girl and knows her mind.”

Dick pondered this an instant.

“I’m going to bed,” said Archie.  “Got to have a straight eye to-morrow.”

“Oh! sit down a second....  I want to talk.”

Archie, as a compromise, propped himself against the back of a chair.

“She doesn’t regret it, then?” pursued Dick.

“Not she,” said Archie.  “It would never have done.”

“I know,” agreed Dick warmly. (It was a real pleasure to him that head and heart went together in this matter.) “But sometimes, you know, women regret that sort of thing.  Wish they hadn’t been quite so sensible, you know.”

“Jenny doesn’t,” said Archie.

Dick took up his glass which he had filled with his third whisky-and-soda, hardly five minutes before, and drank half of it.  He sucked his mustache, and in that instant confidentialism rose in his heart.

“Well, I’m going to have a shot myself,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m going to have a shot.  She can but say ‘No.’”

Archie’s extreme repose of manner vanished for a second.  His jaw dropped a little.

“But, good Lord!  I hadn’t the faintest—­”

“I know you hadn’t.  But I’ve had it for a long time....  What d’you think, Archie?”