She was certainly irritating this afternoon. Ancram gave his Waler as smart a cut as he dared, and they dashed past Lord Napier, sitting on his intelligent charger in serious bronze to all eternity, and rounded the bend into the Strand. The brown river tore at its heaving buoys; the tide was racing out. The sun had dipped, and the tall ships lay in the after-glow in twos and threes and congeries along the bank, along the edge of Calcutta, until in the curving distance they became mere suggestions of one another and a twilight of tilted masts. Under their keels slipped great breadths of shining water. Against the glow on it a country-boat, with its unwieldy load of hay, looked like a floating barn. On the indistinct other side the only thing that asserted itself was a factory chimney. They talked of the eternal novelty of the river, and the eternal sameness of the people they met; and then he lapsed again. Rhoda looked down at the bow of her slipper. “Have you got a headache?” she asked. The interrogation was one of cheerful docility. “Thanks, no. I beg your pardon: I’m afraid I was inexcusably preoccupied.” “Would it be indiscreet to ask what about? Don’t you want my opinion? I am longing to give you my opinion.” “Your opinion would be valuable.” Miss Daye again glanced down at her slipper. This time her pretty eyelashes shaded a ray of amused perception. “He thinks he can do it himself,” she remarked privately. “He is quite ready to give himself all the credit of getting out of it gracefully. The amount of flattery they demand for themselves, these Secretaries!” “A premium on my opinion!” she said. “How delightful!” Ancram turned the Waler sharply into the first road that led to the Casuerina Avenue. The Casuerina Avenue is almost always poetic, and might be imagined to lend itself very effectively, after sunset, to the funeral of a sentiment which Mr. Ancram was fond of describing to himself as still-born. The girl beside him noted the slenderness of his foot and the excellent cut of his grey tweed trousers. Her eyes dwelt upon the nervously vigorous way he handled the reins, and her glance of light bright inquiry ascertained a vertical line between his eyebrows. It was the line that accompanied the Honourable Mr. Ancram’s Bills in Council, and it indicated a disinclination to compromise. Miss Daye, fully apprehending its significance, regarded him with an interest that might almost be described as affectionate. She said to herself that he would bungle. She was rather sorry for him. And he did. “I should be glad of your opinion of our relation,” he said—which was very crude. “I think it is charming. I was never more interested in my life!” she declared frankly, bringing her lips together in the pretty composure with which she usually told the vague little lie of her satisfaction with life. “Does that sum up your idea of—of the possibilities of our situation?” He felt that he was doing better.