Longing as she did to put herself in line with him whenever she could, she allowed his feelings against Lassigny to affect her. There was nothing tangible. He knew nothing against him--hardly anything about him, indeed, except what all the world of his friends knew. With an Englishman in the same position it would have been quite enough. From a worldly point of view the match would be unexceptionable. There was wealth as well as station, and the station was of the sort that would be recognised in England, under the circumstances of Lassigny's English tastes and English sojourns. But that side of it was never mentioned. She had the impression of Lassigny as something different from what she had ever known him--with something dark and secret in his background, something that would soil Beatrix, or at least bring her unhappiness in marriage. And yet it was nothing definite. When she asked him directly if he knew anything against him, he answered her impatiently again. Oh, no. The fellow was a Frenchman. That was all he needed to know. They were no nearer to anything, and she was no nearer to him, when they arrived at Feltham Hall. When they had passed through the lodge gates he suddenly said that he would ride back alone. She would be all right with Barbara and Bunting. He turned and rode off, with hardly a good-bye to her. Worthing lived in comfortable style in an old-fashioned farmhouse, which had been adapted to the use of a gentleman of quality. The great kitchen had been converted into a sitting-room, the parlour made a convenient dining-room, and there were four or five oak-raftered lattice-windowed bedrooms, with a wider view over the surrounding country than was gained from any window of the Abbey, which lay rather in a hollow. As Grafton waited for his host, walking about his comfortable bachelor's room, or sitting dejectedly by the open window looking out on to the rain, which had again begun to come down heavily, he was half-inclined to envy Worthing his well-placed congenial existence. A bachelor--if he were a bachelor by temperament--lived a life free of care. Such troubles as this that had so suddenly come to disturb his own more elaborate life he was at least immune from.