Even this prospect, however, did not, as I say, depress me. Dumb objects like caravans have no such power, and as nobody not dumb had yet crossed my path I was still, so to speak, untarnished. I had even made up my mind to forget the half-hour with Edelgard the previous night after the ball, and since a willingness to forget is the same thing as a willingness to forgive I think you will all agree that I began that day very well. Descending to breakfast, I experienced a slight shock (the first breath of tarnish) on finding no one but Mrs. Menzies-Legh and the nondescripts there. Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, though no doubt feeling privately awkward managed to behave as though nothing had happened, hoped I had slept well, and brought my coffee. She did not talk as much as usual, but attended to my wants with an assiduousness that pointed to her being, after all, ashamed. I inquired of her with the dignity that means determined distance where the others were, and she said gone for a walk. She remarked on the beauty of the day, and I replied, “It is indeed.” She then said, slightly sighing, that if only the weather had been like that from the first the tour would have been so much more enjoyable. On which I observed, with reserved yet easy conversation, that the greater part still lay before us, and who knew but that from then on it was not going to be fine? At this she looked at me in silence, her head poised slightly on one side, seriously and pensively, as she had done among the Bodiam ruins; then opened her mouth as though to speak, but thinking better of it got up instead and fetched me more food. At last, thought I, she was learning the right way to set about pleasing; and I could not prevent a feeling of gratification at the success of my method with her. There was an unusually good breakfast too, which increased this feeling--eggs and bacon, a combined luxury not before seen on our table. The fledglings hung over the stove with heated cheeks preparing relays of it under Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s directions, who, while she directed, held the coffee-pot in her arms to keep it warm. She explained she did so for my second cup. I might and indeed I would have suspected that she did so not to keep the coffee but her arms warm, if it had not been such a grilling day. Heat quivered in a blue haze over the hop-poles of the adjacent field. The sunless farmhouse looked invitingly cool and shady now that the surrounding hill-tops were one glare of light. To hold warm coffee in one’s arms on such a morning could not possibly show anything but a meritorious desire to make amends; and as I am not a man to do what the scriptural call quench the smoking flax, and yet not a man to forgive too quickly recently audacious ladies, I dexterously mingled extreme politeness with an unshakable reserve.