Mrs. Sprowl glared at him; and, as she thought of Langly, of Strelsa, of the collapse of her own schemes, the baffled rage began to smoulder in her tiny green eyes till they dwindled and dwindled to a pair of phosphorescent sparks imbedded in fat. "I did my best," she said hoarsely. "I'm not defeated if you're not. Say the word and I'll start something--" And suddenly she remembered Langly's threat involving the memory of a dead man whose only son now stood before her. She knew that her words were vain, her boast empty; she knew there was nothing more for her to do--nothing even that Sir Charles might do toward winning Strelsa without also doing the only thing in the world which could really terrify herself. Even at the mere thought of it she trembled again, and fear forced her to speech born of fear: "Perhaps it is best for you to go," she faltered. "Absence is a last resort.... It may be well to try it----" He bent over and took her hand: "There is no longer even a last resort," he said kindly. "I am quite reconciled. She is different from any other woman; ours was and is a high type of friendship.... Sometimes, lately, I have wondered whether it ever could have been any more than that to either of us." Mrs. Sprowl looked up at him, her face so altered and softened that his own grew graver. "You are like your father," she said unsteadily. "It was my privilege to share his friendship.... And his friendship was of that kind--high-minded, generous, pure--asking no more than it gave--no more than it gave----" She laid her cheek against Sir Charles's hands, let it rest there an instant, then averting her face motioned his dismissal. He went with a pleasant and gentle word or two; she sat bolt upright among her silken pillows, lips grimly compressed, but on her tightly closed eyelids tears trembled. Sir Charles drew a long deep breath in the outer sunshine, filling his lungs with the fragrant morning air. Hedges still glistened with spiders' tapestry; the birds which sulked all day in their early moulting-fever still sang a little in the cool of the morning, and he listened to them as he walked while his quiet, impartial eye ranged over the lovely rolling country, dew-washed and exquisite under a cloudless sky. Far away he saw the chimneys of Langly Sprowl's sprawling country-seat, smoke rising from two, but he saw nothing of the angry horseman of the day before. Once, in the distance on the edge of a copse, he saw a man creeping about on all-fours, evidently searching for some lost object in the thicket. Looking back from a long way off he saw him still searching on his hands and knees, and wondered at his patience, half inclined to go back and aid him. But about that time one of Sprowl's young bulls came walking over toward him with such menacing observations and deportment that Sir Charles promptly looked about him for an advance to the rear-front--a manœuvre he had been obliged to learn in the late Transvaal unpleasantness.