Under the spreading tree the Marchesa lunched--not in isolation, not in gloom. She had company--and, even as he appeared, a merry peal of laughter was wafted by a favouring breeze across the field of battle. Stabb’s ponderous figure, Roger Wilbraham’s highly recognisable “blazer,” told the truth plainly. Lord Lynborough was not the only expert in the art of driving wedges! “Well played, Helena!” he said under his breath. The rest of the cricket match interested him very little. Successful beyond their expectations, Fillby won by five runs (Wilbraham not out thirty-seven)--but Lynborough’s score did not swell the victorious total. In Easthorpe’s second innings--which could not affect the result--Peters let him bowl, and he got young Woodwell’s wicket. That was a distinction; yet, looking at the day as a whole, he had scored less than he expected. CHAPTER X IN THE LAST RESORT! It will have been perceived by now that Lord Lynborough delighted in a fight. He revelled in being opposed; the man who withstood him to the face gave him such pleasure as to beget in his mind certainly gratitude, perhaps affection, or at least a predisposition thereto. There was nothing he liked so much as an even battle--unless, by chance, it were the scales seeming to incline a little against him. Then his spirits rose highest, his courage was most buoyant, his kindliness most sunny. The benefit of this disposition accrued to the Marchesa; for by her sudden counter-attack she had at least redressed the balance of the campaign. He could not be sure that she had not done more. The ladies of her party were his--he reckoned confidently on that; but the men he could not count as more than neutral at the best; Wenman, anyhow, could easily be whistled back to the Marchesa’s heel. But in his own house, he admitted at once, she had secured for him open hostility, for herself the warmest of partisanship. The meaning of her lunch was too plain to doubt. No wonder her opposition to her own deserters had been so faint; no wonder she had so readily, even if so scornfully, afforded them the pretext--the barren verbal permission--that they had required. She had not wanted them--no, not even the Colonel himself! She had wanted to be alone with Roger and with Stabb--and to complete the work of her blandishments on those guileless, tender-hearted, and susceptible persons. Lynborough admired, applauded, and promised himself considerable entertainment at dinner. How was the Marchesa, in her turn, bearing her domestic isolation, the internal disaffection at Nab Grange? He flattered himself that she would not be finding in it such pleasure as his whimsical temper reaped from the corresponding position of affairs at Scarsmoor.