The years as they passed only strengthened this determination.  Each proud inclination of the head, each ceremonious lift of the hat, added bitterness to their mutual resentment—­to his feeling that she was spoiled by her money, and to her feeling that he wilfully misjudged her.  The breach was widened by their unconcealed flirtations—­a description mentally applied to the most ordinary man-and-woman acquaintanceships on either side, but not inappropriate in all cases.  Claud ever loved the company of handsome women who appreciated him; Deb naturally inclined to nice men in preference to the nicest women; and each liked to show the other that he or she was still of high importance to somebody.  Rumours of impending marriage were continually being wafted to his ears or hers, but nothing came of them.  He was confirmed in luxurious bachelorhood; she was aware of many fortune-hunters, and could not bring herself to value any of her disinterested suitors at the price of her freedom.  So the one-time lovers drifted more and more apart, until somehow they lost sight of each other altogether; and meanwhile the years made them old without their knowing it.

She was unreasonably upset on one occasion by the offer of a specific for grey hair from a fashionable London hair-dresser.  It was absolutely permanent, harmless and undetectable, he said.  “But I am not grey,” she indignantly informed him.  Whereupon she saw his keen professional eye wander about her brow as he murmured something about the faint beginnings that might as well be checked.  At home she studied the matter carefully in a strong light, and called Rosalie, her maid, to aid her.  The little Frenchwoman assured her that a microscope was needed to detect a white thread in that beautiful mass of dark nut-brown.  With a microscope, no doubt, as many as half a dozen might be discerned dimly, just where it waved back from mademoiselle’s face.

That same afternoon she and Rosalie left town for one of their country-house visits.  It was a weepy autumn day, and she was not as fresh as usual—­the hair-dresser, combined with some troublesome shopping, had tired her—­and the disquieting suspicion laid hold of her that she was more easily fatigued than she used to be.  While reading her novel in the train, she counted her years, and compared herself with the women she knew whose ages were recorded in the Peerage, and who could therefore be proved to be as old as herself.  Some of them were wrinkled hags.  Carelessness or ill-health, doubtless, she reflected; and neither charge could be laid at her door.  Heigh-ho!  That horrid man!

It was dark night when they reached the little station belonging to the mansion that was their goal.  A dozen other guests and their servants and baggage crowded the platform, and half-a-dozen carriages and luggage-brakes the yard behind; and Deb was at once in charge of a tall footman, Rosalie struggling through the press with jewel-case and dressing-bag, chattering French to one of her familiars in the rear.  Distracted stationmaster and porters uncovered to the stately woman as she passed.  It was all a matter of course to her these days.