"And that's where the match would be of decisive value," Lady Evenswood concluded. "Disney said as much evidently. So you understood, Madame Zabriska?" "I suppose so. I've told you what he said." "He could take Blentmouth, you know. It's all very simple." "Well, I'm not sure that our friend Iver isn't keeping that for himself," smiled Southend. "Oh, he can be Lord Bricks and Putty," she suggested, laughing. But there seemed in her words a deplorable hint of scorn for that process by which the vitality (not to say the solvency) of the British aristocracy is notoriously maintained. "Blentmouth would do very well for Harry Tristram." "Well then, what's to be done?" asked Southend. "We must give him a hint, George." "Have we enough to go upon? Suppose Disney turned round and----" "Robert won't do that. Besides, we needn't pledge anything. We can just put the case." She smiled thoughtfully. "I'm still not quite sure how Mr Tristram will take it, you know." "How he'll take it? He'll jump at it, of course." "The girl or the title, George?" "Well, both together. Won't he, Madame Zabriska?" Mina thought great things of the girl, and even greater, if vaguer, of the title. "I should just think so," she replied complacently. There was a limit to the perversity even of the Tristrams. "We mustn't put it too baldly," observed Southend, dangling his eyeglass. "Oh, he'll think more of the thing itself than of how we put it," Lady Evenswood declared. From her knowledge of Harry, the Imp was exactly of that opinion. But Southend was for diplomacy; indeed what pleasure is there in manœuvring schemes if they are not to be conducted with delicacy? A policy that can be defined on a postage stamp has no attraction for ingenious minds, although it is usually the most effective with a nation. Harry Tristram returned from Blinkhampton in a state of intellectual satisfaction marred by a sense of emotional emptiness. He had been very active, very energetic, very successful. He had new and cogent evidence of his power, not merely to start but to go ahead on his own account. This was the good side. But he discovered and tried to rebuke in himself a feeling that he had so far wasted the time in that he had seen nobody and nothing beautiful. Men of affairs had no concern with a feeling like that. Would Iver have it, or would Mr Disney? Surely not! It would be a positive inconvenience to them, or at best a worthless asset. He traced it back to Blent, to that influence which he had almost brought himself to call malign because it seemed in some subtle way enervating, a thing that sought to clog his steps and hung about those feet which had need to be so alert and nimble. Yet the old life at Blent would not have served by itself now. Was he to turn out so exacting that he must have both lives before he, or what was in him, could cry "Content"? A man will sometimes be alarmed when he realizes what he wants--a woman often.