He could, if he had been so inclined, have observed the process at work after dinner, when, his mother seated with knitting in an arm-chair on the one side of the fire, and he with a cigar in another arm-chair on the other side of the fire, his legs stretched out straight to the blaze, they talked intermittently, a conversation in which the future played more part than the past. Henry found that his mother had definite ideas about the future, ideas which she took for granted that he would share. He knew that he ought to say at once that he did not share them; but that would entail disappointing his mother, and this he was reluctant to do—at any rate on the first day. Poor old lady—let her be happy. What was the good of sending her to bed worried? In a day or two he would give her a hint. He remembered that she was not usually slow at taking a hint. He hoped she would not make a fuss. Really, it would be unreasonable if she made a fuss; she could not seriously expect him to spend his life in talking to Lynes! But for the present, let her keep her illusions; she seemed so greatly to enjoy telling him about her farm, and he needn’t listen; he could say “Yes,” and “Fancy,” from time to time, since that seemed to satisfy her, and, meanwhile, he could think about Isabel. He had promised Isabel that he would not be away for more than three days at the outside. He hoped he would not find it too difficult to get away back to London at the end of three days; there would be a fuss if he went, but on the other hand Isabel would make a far worse fuss if he stayed. Isabel was not as easy-going as he could have wished, though her flares of temper, when they were not so prolonged as to become inconvenient, amused him and constituted part of the attraction she had for him. He rendered to Isabel the homage that she attracted him just as much now as five years ago, before he left for the Argentine. She had even improved in the interval; improved with experience, he told himself cynically, not resenting the experience in the least; she had improved in appearance too, having found her type; and he recalled the shock of delight with which he had seen her again: the curious pale eyes, and the hard line of the clubbed black hair, cut square across her brows; certainly Isabel had attraction, and was as wild as she could be, not a woman one could neglect with impunity, if one didn’t want her to be off and away.... No. There was a flick and a spirit about Isabel; that was what he liked. How his mother would disapprove of Isabel! he sent out, to disguise a little chuckle, a long stream of smoke, and the thought of his mother’s disapproval tickled him much. His mother, rambling on about foot-and-mouth disease, and about how afraid they had been, last year, that it would come across into Gloucestershire, while Isabel, probably, was at some supper-party sitting on a table and singing to her guitar those Moorish songs in her husky, seductive voice.