In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth or freedom imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna in its decay had been more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in his profession things might have been different. No doubt she would have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine. No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her, she was thrown more and more upon her own resources. Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless. And indeed, how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love had failed so signally? Even so, she would not own herself beaten. It was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him.