Kingston would have liked to go alone. Gundred had just succeeded in irritating him, he felt, to the last point of endurance. Her bland impenetrability was nothing short of tragic. Nothing could ever teach her what to say and what to leave unsaid, for nothing could teach her to feel. She had the sublime elephantine tactlessness of perfect self-satisfaction. Her husband, for one wild moment, wanted to get away from it all--from Gundred, level, monotonous, stodgy, yet unsatisfying; from the dear good old mother who did not count, who never could count; from Isabel, tormenting, tantalizing, odious Isabel. To be alone, up there in the radiance, far above the world of desire and dissatisfactions--that would be, at least for half an hour, rest and relief. But he was to have none; Isabel was to come, emphasizing at every point the exasperating perfections, the exasperating limitations of his wife. With her usual primitive clumsiness, so utterly at variance with Gundred’s well-drilled movements, Isabel flounced out of the carriage, alighting with a jumping flop that brought down a coil of hair and a shower of pins. Kingston noticed that, as usual, her placket was open. He waited in silence till she should have finished her untidy adjustments. Gundred repeated her injunction. ‘Aunt Minna will be so surprised if you are not there in time to receive her,’ she said. ‘Do be certain that you have time, darling.’ Kingston forced himself to speak. ‘Ivescar is just over the hill,’ he said. ‘We shall be there as soon as you. It will be a short cut--up one side of the Simonstone, and down the other. Are you ready, Isabel?’ Yes, Isabel had finished tucking up her skirt. It was a skirt as inadequate for visiting as for mountaineering. And now she had bunched it up on one side to give her legs full play, and its effect was not only incongruous, but lumpy and lopsided. However, for such matters Isabel cared nothing. She was ready. Without another word, Kingston turned aside and opened a gate. Together they passed through into the field bordering the road, on their way to the copse above, that sloped up to the limestone cliff, and so led on to the heights overhead. Gundred watched them go. A faint, a very faint ripple of doubt trembled across the calm waters of her self-complacency. She had the strangest, the most ridiculous, the most unheard-of feeling that in some way she had not been at the height of the situation. In some way, she had a dim instinct of having failed. As the carriage drove on, she suddenly found herself feeling a little lonely, a little cold.