That seemed the reasonable method--the plain and rational line of advance. Accordingly Lynborough disliked and distrusted it. He saw another way--more full of risk, more hazardous in its result, making an even greater demand on his confidence in himself, perhaps also on the qualities with which his imagination credited the Marchesa. But, on the other hand, this alternative was far richer in surprise, in dash--as it seemed to him, in gallantry and a touch of romance. It was far more mediæval, more picturesque, more in keeping with the actual proposal itself. For the actual proposal was one which, Lynborough flattered himself, might well have come from a powerful yet chivalrous baron of old days to a beautiful queen who claimed a suzerainty which not her power, but only her beauty, could command or enforce. “It suits my humour, and I’ll do it!” he said. “She sha’n’t see me, and I won’t see her. The first she shall hear from me shall be the proposal; the first time we meet shall be on the twenty-fourth--or never! A week from to-day--the twenty-fourth.” Now the twenty-fourth of June is, as all the world knows (or an almanac will inform the heathen), the Feast of St John Baptist, also called Midsummer Day. So he disappeared from the view of Nab Grange and the inhabitants thereof. He never left his own grounds; even within them he shunned the public road; his beloved sea-bathing he abandoned. Nay, more, he strictly charged Roger Wilbraham, who often during this week of armistice went to play golf or tennis at the Grange, to say nothing of him; the same instructions were laid on Stabb in case, on his excursions amidst the tombs, he should meet any member of the Marchesa’s party. So far as the thing could be done, Lord Lynborough obliterated himself. It was playing a high stake on a risky hand. Plainly it assumed an interest in himself on the part of the Marchesa--an interest so strong that absence and mystery (if perchance he achieved a flavour of that attraction!) would foster and nourish it more than presence and friendship could conduce to its increase. She might think nothing about him during the week! Impossible surely--with all that had gone before, and with his proposal to come at the end! But if it were so--why, so he was content. “In that case, she’s a woman of no imagination, of no taste in the picturesque,” he said.