No vocabulary of the Servants’ Hall could have encompassed the fine phrase _grand seigneur_, but, when Mrs. Blayne and the rest talked of him in their least resentful and more amiable moods, they unconsciously made efforts to express the quality in him which these two words convey. He had ways of his own. Men that paid a pretty woman’s bills and kept her going in luxury, Jennings and Mrs. Blayne and the others knew something about. They sometimes began well enough but, as time went on, they forgot themselves and got into the way of being familiar and showing they realized that they paid for things and had their rights. Most of them began to be almost like husbands—speak slighting and sharp and be a bit stiff about accounts—even before servants. They ran in and out or—after a while—began to stay away and not show up for weeks. “He” was different—so different that it was queer. Queer it certainly was that he really came to the place very seldom. Wherever they met, it didn’t noticeably often happen in the slice of a house. He came as if he were a visitor. He took no liberties. Everything was punctiliously referred to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Mr. Benby, who did everything, conducted himself outwardly as if he were a sort of man of business in Mrs. Gareth-Lawlesss’ employ. It was open to the lenient to believe that she depended on some mysterious private income. There were people who preferred to try to believe this, but there were those who, in some occult way, knew exactly where her income came from. There were, in fact, hypercritical persons who did not know or notice her, but she had quite an entertaining, smart circle which neither suspicions nor beliefs prevented from placing her in their visiting lists. Coombe _did_ keep it up in the most perfect manner, some of them said admiringly among themselves. He showed extraordinarily perfect taste. Many fashionable open secrets, accepted by a brilliant world, were not half so fastidiously managed. Andrews knew he had unswervingly lied when he said he had “spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.” But he never failed to place her in the position of authority. That he should have presented himself on the nursery floor was amazingly abnormal enough to mean some state of mind unregulated by all natural rules. “Him,” Andrews thought, “that never steps out of a visitor’s place in the drawing-room turning up on the third floor without a word!” One thing she knew, and that came first. Behind all the polite show he was the head of everything. And he was one that you’d better not give back a sound to if you knew what was good for yourself. Whatever people said against his character, he was one of the grand and high ones. A word from him—ever so quiet—and you’d be done for. She was shaking with fear inwardly, but she undressed Robin and put her in bed, laying everything away and making things tidy for the night.