Godfrey did not wish to admit that the man whom (as he hoped) she loved lacked courage. The answer irritated him; he sat frowning sulkily, his usual gaiety sadly overcast. Winnie's eyes scanned his face for a moment; then, with a sigh, she looked over the lawn to the valley below. She was disappointed with the reception of her great idea. "Of course the two people would have to be very much in love with one another," she added, with a little falter in her voice. He found a way out of his difficulty. "The more a man loved a woman, the less likely he'd be to consent to put her in such a position," he argued. His face cleared; he was pleased with his point; it was good, according to the code. "It would be the only honourable position for her," Winnie retorted. He rose to his feet in a temper; it was all so unreasonable. "I must go." "Are you coming to anything to-morrow?" "No, I shall be in town to-morrow. I dare say I shall stay a night or two." This was by way of revenge--or punishment. Let her see how she liked Shaylor's Patch without him! She turned to him, holding out her hand; in her eyes was raillery, half-reproachful, half-merry. "Come back in a better temper!" she said. "I'm a fool to come back at all." He kissed her hand and looked steadily into her eyes before he went away. Himself at once a poor and a pleasure-loving man, Godfrey had the good luck to own a well-to-do and devoted friend, always delighted to "put him up" and to give him the best of hospitality. Bob Purnett and he were old schoolfellows and had never lost sight of one another. Bob had four thousand a year of his own (though not of his own making), and in the summer he had no work to do; in the winter he hunted. He was a jovial being and very popular, except with the House Committee and the cook of his club; to these unfortunate officials he was in the nature of a perpetual Assize Court presided over by a "Hanging Judge." He gave Godfrey a beautiful dinner and a magnum of fine claret; let it be set down to his credit that he drank--and gave--fine claret at small dinners. He knew better than to be intemperate. Did he not want to go on hunting as long as possible? Nor was Godfrey given to excess in wine-drinking. Still the dinner, the claret, the old friendship, the liqueur, the good cigar, did their work. Godfrey found himself putting the case. It appeared to Bob Purnett a curious one. "But it's rot," he observed. "You're married or you're not--eh?" He himself was not--quite distinctly. "Must be very pretty, or she wouldn't expect you to stand it?" Godfrey laughed. There was a primitive truthfulness about Purnett's conversation. He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in theory--quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch. "She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady--and straight, and all that." "Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett.