“Let Menzies-Legh convince her,” thought I, making myself ready for the walk back in the rain, aware that I had quite enough to do convincing my own wife. “Try praising,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh. Not seeing the point, I buttoned in silence. “Praising and encouraging. You’d be astonished at the results.” In silence, for I would not be at the trouble of asking what it was I was to praise and encourage, I turned up my collar and fastened the little strap across the front. She, seeing I had no further intention of talking, began to get ready too for the plunge out into the rain. “You’re not angry, Baron dear?” she asked, leaning across and looking into as much of my face as appeared above the collar. This mode of addressing me was one that I had never in any way encouraged, but no amount of stiffening at its use discouraged it. In justice, I must remind you who have met her that her voice is not disagreeable. You will remember it is low, and so far removed from shrillness that it lends a spurious air to everything she says of being more worth listening to than it is. Edelgard described it fancifully, but not altogether badly, as being full of shadows. It vibrated, not unmusically, up and down among these shadows, and when she asked me if I were angry it took on a very fair semblance of sympathetic concern. I, however, knew very well that the last thing she really was was sympathetic--all the aptitude for sympathy the Flitz family had produced was concentrated in her gentle sister--so I was in no way hoodwinked. “My dear lady,” I said, shaking out the folds of my cloak, “I am not a child.” “Sometimes I think,” said she, getting up too, “that you are not enjoying your holiday. That it’s not what you thought it would be. That perhaps we are not a very--not a very congenial party.” “You are very good,” said I, with a stiffness that relegated her at once to an immense and proper distance away, for was not this a tending toward the confidential? And a man has to be careful.