Never had she realised so fully how prosperous, how noble an estate was Bindon, how altogether desirable; how different from the barren acres of Roy and the savage discomfort of its neglected castle. To this plenty, this refinement, this richness, these traditions, her splendid boy was heir by right of blood. And she would have him remain so! She laughed aloud, suddenly, scornfully, and tossed her head with a ghost of the wild grace that had made Maud Cheveral the toast of a London season; a grace that still drew in the wake of the capricious, fading Lady Lochore a score of idle admirers. It would be odd indeed if the sly country widow, pink and white as she was, should be a match for her, now that they could meet on level ground. There came a knock at the door. “If you please, my lady,” said Margery, “humbly asking your pardon for intruding, I hope your ladyship remembers me. I’m one of the old servants, and glad to welcome your ladyship back again to your rightful place. And the little heir, as we call him, God bless him for a beauty——” “Come in, woman,” cried Lady Lochore, “come in and shut the door!” CHAPTER IX A RIDER INTO BATH It is not quiet, is not ease, But something deeper far than these: The separation that is here is of the grave. —WORDSWORTH (_Elegiac Poems_). If a woman, being in love, gain thereby a certain intuition into the character of the man she loves, the thousand contradictory emotions of that unrestful state, its despairs, angers, jealousies, its unreasonable susceptibilities, all combine to obscure her judgment; so that, at the same time she knows him better than anyone else can, and yet can be harsher, more unjust to him than the rest of the world. Thus Ellinor understood exactly what was now causing the metamorphosis of David. She alone guessed the struggle of his week’s seclusion, from which he had emerged armoured, as it were, to face the slings and arrows of the new turn of fate. She alone knew the inward shrinking, the sick distaste which were covered by this polished breast-plate of sarcastic reserve; knew that this deadly courtesy was the only weapon to his hand, and that he would not lay it aside for a second in the enemy’s presence. At that moment when she had seen him read in the child’s face the image of its father, she had read in his own eyes the irrevocable truth of those slow words of his under the night sky: “He who remembers never forgives.” She felt, too, that his very regard for her made it incumbent on him to treat her now as ceremoniously as his other guest; that to have openly singled her out for notice, or privately to have indulged himself with her company, would have been alike tactless and ungenerous. But in spite of all reason could tell her, she felt hurt, she was chilled, she gave him back coldness for coldness and mocking formality for his grave courtesy.