Yet Madeleine Tonbridge had by no means come to Maumsey Abbey, at Winnington's bidding, as to a Land of Cockaigne. She at all events regarded Delia as a "handful," and was on the watch day by day for things outrageous. She could not help liking the beautiful creature--almost loving her! But Delia was still a "Daughter of Revolt"--apparently unrepentant; that dangerous fanatic, her pretended chaperon, was still in constant correspondence with her; the papers teemed with news of militant outrages, north, south, east and west; and riotous doings were threatened for the meetings of Parliament by Delia's Society. On all these matters Delia shut her proud lips. Indeed her new reticence with regard to militant doings and beliefs struck Lady Tonbridge as more alarming than the young and arrogant defiance with which on her first arrival she had been wont to throw them at the world. Madeleine could not rid herself of the impression during these weeks that Delia had some secret cause of anxiety connected with the militant propaganda. She was often depressed, and there were moments when she shewed a nervousness not easily accounted for. She scarcely ever mentioned Gertrude Marvell; and she never wrote her letters in public; while those she received, she would carry away to the gun room--which she had now made her own particular den--before she opened them. At the same time, if Weston recovered from the operation, in three weeks or so it would be possible for Delia to leave Maumsey; and it was generally understood that she would then join her friend in London, just in time for the opening of Parliament. For the moment, it was plain she was not engaged in any violent doings. But who could answer for the future? And meanwhile, what was Mark Winnington about? It was all very well to sit there trifling with the pages of the _Quarterly Review_! In her moments of solitude by night or day, during the five days she had already spent at Maumsey, Madeleine had never really given her mind to anything else but the engrossing question. "Is he in love with her--or is he not?" Of course she had foreseen--had feared--the possibility of it, from that very first moment, almost--when Winnington had written to her describing the terms of Bob Blanchflower's will, and his own acceptance of the guardianship. Yet why "feared"? Had she not for years desired few things so sincerely as to see Winnington happily married? As to that old tragedy, with its romantic effect upon his life, her first acquiescence in that effect, as something irrevocable, had worn away with time. It now seemed to her an intolerable thing that Agnes Clay's death should forever stand between Winnington and love. It was positively anti-social--bad citizenship--that such a man as Mark Winnington should not produce sons and daughters for the State, when all the wastrels and cheats in creation were so active in the business.