Colonel Harcourt went perforce a step behind her, just avoiding to tread on her garments as they trailed, dragging the little pebbles on the hot grey soil. Now and again he mopped his brow. He liked neither the sun on his back nor the strong breath of the flowers, nor this aimless promenade. But, in his dealings with women, he had kept an invariable rule of almost exaggerated deference in little things, and he had found that he could go further in great ones than most men who disdained such nicety. Suddenly Lady Lochore stopped and began to cough. Then she wheeled round and looked at Harcourt with irate eyes over the folds of her handkerchief she was pressing to her lips. Anthony Harcourt possessed a breast as hard as granite, withal an easy superficial gentlemanly benevolence which did very well for the world in lieu of deeper feeling; and a great deal better for himself. He was quite shocked at the sound of that cough; still more so when Lady Lochore flung out the handkerchief towards him with the inimitable gesture of the living tragedy and showed it to him stained with blood. “Look at that, Tony,” said she, “and tell me how long do you think it will be before I bark myself to death?” Her cheek was scarlet and her eyes shone with unnatural brilliance in their wasted sockets. She swayed a little as she stood, like the lilies about her; and indeed she herself looked like some passionate southern flower wasting life and essence even as one looked at her. “Come out of this heat,” said Harcourt. He took her left arm and placed it within his; led her to a stone bench in the shade. She sat down with an impatient sigh, passed the back of the hand he had held impatiently over her wet forehead and closed her eyes. In her right hand, crushed upon her lap, the stained cambric lay hidden. “Is not this better,” said her companion, as if he were speaking to a child, “out of that sunshine and the sickly smell of those flowers? Here we get the breeze from the woods and the scent of the hay. A sort of little heaven after a successful imitation of the infernal regions.” “If you mean Hell, why don’t you say Hell?” said Lady Lochore. She laughed in that bitterness of soul that can find no expression but in irony. “Bah!” she went on, half to herself. “It’s no use trying not to believe in Hell, my friend; you have to, when you’ve got it in you! Look here,” she suddenly blazed her unhappy eyes upon him. “Look here, Tony—honour, now! How long do you give me?” All the man’s superficial benevolence looked sadly at her from his handsome face. “I am no doctor.” “Faugh! Subterfuge!” “Why, then, at the rate going, not three months,” said he. “But, with rational care, I’ve no doubt, as long as most.”