Morning. In the breakfast-room he faced a Lucy self-possessed, with guarded eyes, and, if he could have seen it, with implied reproach stiffening every line of her. Her generosity gratified him, but should have touched him keenly. She came to him at once, and put up her face. "I'm sorry I was so cross, James." His immediate feeling, I say, was one of gratification. That was all right. She had come in. To that succeeded a wave of kindness. He dropped his glass, and took her strongly in his arms. "Dearest, I behaved very badly. I'm truly sorry." He kissed her, and for a moment she clung to him, but avoided his further kisses. Yet he had kissed her as a man should. She had nothing more to say, but he felt it her due that he should add something while yet he held her. "As for poor Francis--I know that I was absurd--I admit it frankly." He felt her shake and guessed her indignation. "You'll believe me, dear. You know I don't like owning myself a fool." Then she had looked up, still in his arms--"Why should you be so stupid? How can you possibly be? You, of all people!" There she was again. But he intended to make peace once and for all. "My dearest, I can't be more abject, for the life of me. I have confessed that I was an abounding ass. Please to believe in me. Ask Francis Lingen to tea for a month of days--and not a word from me!" She had laughed, rather scornfully, and tried to free herself. He kissed her again before he let her go. Almost immediately he resumed his habits--eyeglass, _Morning Post_, and scraps of comment. He made an effort and succeeded, he thought, in being himself. "Johnny Mallet gives another party at the Bachelors to-day. I believe I go. Has he asked you? He means to. He's a tufthunter--but he gets tufts.... I see that the Fathers in God are raving about the Tithe Bill. I shall have Jasper Mellen at me--and the Dean too. Do you remember--did you ever hear, I wonder, of _Box and Cox_? They have a knack of coming to me on the same day. Once they met on the doorstep, and each of them turned and fled away. It must have been very comic...." Lucy busied herself with her letters and her coffee-cups. She wished that she did not feel so ruffled, but--a walk would do her good. She would go into the Park presently, and look at the tulips and lilacs. It was horrid to feel so stuffy on such a perfect day. How long to Whitsuntide? That was to be heavenly--if James didn't get inspired by the dark! Something would have to be prepared for that. In her eyes, sedate though they were, there lurked a gleam: the beacon-fire of a woman beleaguered. Certainly Jimmy Urquhart liked her. He had said that she liked him. Well, and so she did. Very much indeed. James went, forgiven, to his Bishops and Deans, and to lunch with his Johnny Mallet and the tufted. Lucy, her household duties done, arrayed herself for the tulips of the Park.