As for Isabel, he and she had very little to say to each other in these few ensuing days. What had happened had happened; it had given them a blessed consciousness; there was no need to be putting it into words. Exhausted by emotions, they were content to let themselves drift. That the situation was terribly unsafe and precarious Kingston knew in his heart. He realized that it could not long be continued. But for the moment he acquiesced, and trusted that, before the strain broke in catastrophe, Fate might provide some solution; and, meanwhile, there was nothing for Minne-Adélaïde to get hold of. Mrs. Mimburn had made herself into one of those women who belong to the town, and are quite out of place in the country. Her dress, her voice, her every movement suggested the perpetual neighbourhood of shops, and an habitual dependence on their resources. Paris and London spoke in her, and she looked garish and inappropriate whenever she carried her elaborate boots or her silk petticoats into the country. Her rustic clothes and hats were never genuine. They overdid their effects, and only succeeded in looking like those of an actress at a garden-party on the stage. Mrs. Mimburn’s soul was as urbane as her body and its appointments. She could not live or breathe for long in the country. A nice suburban corner like Surrey might be all very well for a week-end or so. It had a saving artificiality--motors and bridge-parties and all kinds of gaieties seemed quite in place. One could wear decent clothes, and yet be in the picture. A civilized landscape like that was nothing more than a good _mise-en-scène_ for an added last act to the “Drama of the Season.” Mrs. Mimburn could tolerate such an atmosphere without beginning to sigh for Bond Street. But Ivescar, dumped in its desolation, was nothing short of appalling. Minne-Adélaïde withered and shrank. She bitterly regretted that curiosity had brought her there. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to say: only clouds and rocks to look at, and the rain for ever spotting one’s hat, and midges biting one awfully through the openwork of one’s stockings, if ever one went out on the lawn in a presentable shoe! Minne-Adélaïde looked restlessly round for any possibilities of amusement. She felt completely _dépaysée_, out of her world, an exile in a desert that made her most brilliant gowns seem blatant and tawdry. She grew homesick, feverish, overexcited by sheer weight of dullness. She would not go away till she had well spied out the land. But in the meantime she must have something to do--or die. ‘So fascinating, your cousin,’ said Minne-Adélaïde one afternoon, suddenly wearied of counting the raindrops on the window-pane. Gundred looked up from her needlework. ‘Isabel is quite attractive,’ she replied, her tone implying, ever so faintly, that it was a presumption of Mrs. Mimburn even to praise a Mortimer.