’There will not be rain; there will be frost, and you must be well wrapped if you must go,’ said Jenny.  ’And tell them not to think of deputations to Captain Beauchamp yet.’

’No, no deputations; let them send Killick, if they want to say anything,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Wrong!’ the doctor cried; ’wrong! wrong!  Six men won’t hurt you more than one.  And why check them when their feelings are up?  They burn to be speaking some words to you.  Trust me, Beauchamp, if we shun to encounter the good warm soul of numbers, our hearts are narrowed to them.  The business of our modern world is to open heart and stretch out arms to numbers.  In numbers we have our sinews; they are our iron and gold.  Scatter them not; teach them the secret of cohesion.  Practically, since they gave you not their entire confidence once, you should not rebuff them to suspicions of you as aristocrat, when they rise on the effort to believe a man of, as ’tis called, birth their undivided friend.  Meet them!’

‘Send them,’ said Beauchamp.

Jenny Denham fastened a vast cloak and a comforter on the doctor’s heedless shoulders and throat, enjoining on him to return in good time for dinner.

He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory counsel to a man famous for his punctuality.

The day had darkened.

Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano.

‘Do you indeed care to have music?’ said she.  ’I did not wish you to meet a deputation, because your strength is not yet equal to it.  Dr. Shrapnel dwells on principles, forgetful of minor considerations.’

‘I wish thousands did!’ cried Beauchamp.  ’When you play I seem to hear ideas.  Your music makes me think.’

Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano.  ‘Waltzes?’ she asked.

‘Call in a puppet-show at once!’

She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections.

At the finish he said:  ’Now read me your father’s poem, “The Hunt of the Fates."’

She read it to him.

‘Now read, “The Ascent from the Inferno."’

That she read:  and also ‘Soul and Brute,’ another of his favourites.

He wanted more, and told her to read ‘First Love—­Last Love.’

‘I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,’ Jenny said, returning the book to him.

‘I’ll read it,’ said he.

He read with more impressiveness than effect.  Lydiard’s reading thrilled her:  Beauchamp’s insisted too much on particular lines.  But it was worth while observing him.  She saw him always as in a picture, remote from herself.  His loftier social station and strange character precluded any of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire is beginning to glow near them.

‘How I should like to have known your father!’ he said.  ’I don’t wonder at Dr. Shrapnel’s love of him.  Yes, he was one of the great men of his day! and it’s a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can give.  You were ten years old when you lost him.  Describe him to me.’