The baronet was a proud man, and he bethought him that the drawing-rooms, seldom used and something neglected, were not in the state in which he would wish his enemy’s wife to see them. “Where have you put her ladyship?” he asked. “In the hall, Sir Robert.” “Very good. I will come.” The man hastened away over the bridge, and Sir Robert followed, more at leisure, but still quickly. When he had passed the angle of the church which stood in a line with the three blocks of building, connected by porticos, which formed the house, and which, placed on a gentle eminence, looked handsomely over the park, he saw that a carriage with four greys ridden by postillions and attended by two outriders stood before the main door. In the carriage, her face shaded by the large Tuscan hat of the period, sat a young lady reading. She heard Sir Robert’s footstep, and looked up, and in some embarrassment met his eyes. He removed his hat. “It is Lady Louisa, is it not?” he said, looking gravely at her. “Yes,” she said; and she smiled prettily at him. “Will you not go into the house?” “Thank you,” she replied, with a faint blush; “I think my mother wishes to see you alone, Sir Robert.” “Very good.” And with a bow, cold but perfectly courteous, he turned and passed up the broad, shallow steps, which were of the same time-tinted lichen-covered stone as the rest of the building. Mapp, the butler, who had been looking out for him, opened the door, and he entered the hall. In his heart, which was secretly perturbed, was room for the wish that he had been found in other than the high-buttoned gaiters and breeches of his country life. But he suffered no sign of that or of his more serious misgivings to appear, as he advanced to greet the still beautiful woman, who sat daintily warming one sandalled foot at the red embers on the hearth. She was far from being at ease herself. Warnings which her husband had addressed to her at parting recurred and disturbed her. But it is seldom that a woman of the world betrays her feelings, and her manner was perfect as he bent low over her hand. “It is long,” she said gently, “much longer than I like to remember, Sir Robert, since we met.” “It is a long time,” he answered gravely; and when she had reseated herself he sat down opposite her. “It is an age,” she said slowly; and she looked round the hall, with its panelled walls, its deep window-seats, and its panoply of fox-masks and antlers, as if she recalled the past, “It is an age,” she repeated. “Politics are sad dividers of friends.” “I fear,” he replied, in a tone as cold as courtesy permitted, “that they are about to be greater dividers.” She looked at him quickly, with appeal in her eyes. “And yet,” she said, “we saw more of you once.”