Yet, just as she had again allowed herself to think of him as someone far younger and less mature than herself, he quietly renewed the conversation, so far as it concerned Ancoats, talking with a caustic good sense, a shrewd perception, and at bottom with a good feeling, that first astonished her, and then mastered her friendship more and more. She found herself yielding him a fuller and fuller confidence, appealing to him, taking pleasure in anything that woke the humour of the sharp, long face, or that rare blink of the blue eyes that meant a leap of some responsive sympathy he could not quite conceal. And for him it was all pleasure, though he never stopped to think of it. The lines of her slender form, as she sat with such careless dignity beside him, her lovely eyes, the turns of her head, the softening tones of her voice, the sense of an emerging bond that had in it nothing ignoble, nothing to be ashamed of, together with the child's simple liking for him, and the mere physical delight of this morning of late May--the rush and splendour of its white, thunderous clouds, its penetrating, scented air: each and all played their part in the rise of a new emotion he would not have analysed if he could. He was particularly glad that in this fresh day of growing intimacy she had as yet talked politics or "questions" of any sort so little! It made it all the more possible to escape from, to wholly overthrow in his mind, that first hostile image of her, impressed--strange unreason on his part!--by that first meeting with her in the crowd round the injured child, and in the hospital ward. Had she started any subject of mere controversy he would have held his own as stoutly as ever. But so long as she let them lie, _herself_, the woman, insensibly argued for her, and wore down his earlier mood. So long, indeed, as he forgot Maxwell's part in it all! But it was not possible to forget it long. For the wife's passion, in spite of a noble reticence, shone through her whole personality in a way that alternately touched and challenged her new friend. No; let him remember that Maxwell's ways of looking at things were none the less pestilent because _she_ put them into words. * * * * * After luncheon Betty Leven found herself in a corner of the Green Drawing-room. On the other side of it Mrs. Allison and Lord Fontenoy were seated together, with Sir Philip Wentworth not far off. Lord Fontenoy was describing his week in Parliament. Betty, who knew and generally shunned him, raised her eyebrows occasionally, as she caught the animated voice, the queer laughs, and fluent expositions, which the presence of his muse was drawing from this most ungainly of worshippers. His talk, indeed, was one long invocation; and the little white-haired lady in the armchair was doing her best to play Melpomene. Her speech was very soft. But it made for battle; and Fontenoy was never so formidable as when he was fresh from Castle Luton.