"Because you irritate me when you speak like that."
Mildred felt suddenly a little uncomfortable; she had a sense of uncertain grip.
"Really, Jack, you are very ungrateful!" she said. "I am taking all the trouble of sitting with you in the corner, and thinking of a hundred things for your good, which would never have occurred to you, and you merely tell me that I irritate you!"
"I will leave you to find out for yourself," she said.
"You are sufficiently lucid. You have stated what you mean quite clearly. You will leave me. I have found out for myself. So shall we discuss it?"
She had made a false move, and knew it. There was some indefinable change about Jack, which she recognised though she could not analyze it. But the prospect of losing him, even temporarily, on his initiative, was quite another matter to doing it on her own.
"Yes, that is what I mean," she said, sitting down again. "I made a mess, or I might have made one, over that other affair, and I see now that it might have been very injurious to you, especially since Jim Spencer is standing as a Liberal for East Surrey. Did you know that, by the way?"
"Oh, yes. He talked to me about it. It was not wise of you."
"Well, luckily there is no harm done. The thing didn't catch on. But the point is to avoid other dangers. And for the present I am dangerous to you, Jack. People won't begin talking again unless they get fresh cause. Do not let us give them fresh cause."
Mildred liked this less and less. She had imagined that he would want a lot of talking round and reasoning with, and it did not flatter her at all to find him so placidly in accord with her. Yet she had no tangible ground of complaint.
"So that is all right," she said. "Ah, here is Marie. Marie, whenever I see you in that pink dress, I think it is morning."
"It is nearly," said she. "Jack, I am going home. Are you stopping to play?"
"Stop by all means if you feel inclined," she said. "I will send the carriage back for you."
"Mutual confidence of the very first water," she observed.
Again the cook _motif_ sounded, setting his teeth on edge.
"No, I will come with you, Marie," he repeated.
Maud Brereton was lying in a hammock underneath a big chestnut-tree in the garden of the house at Windsor. She had been here a fortnight alone, having been sent from London in disgrace by her mother after her refusal, in consequence of her interview with Marie Alston, to accept the riches and devotion of Anthony Maxwell. This fortnight she had spent in sublime inaction, surrounded as she was by all those things which to her made life lovable. Her dogs were here, her pony was here, the meadows were tall with hay, the river brimming, and the garden-beds presented every day some new miracle of unfolding colour. Each morning she had got up early and ridden in the park, while the day was still cool and dewy; she had read, not much; she had played the piano diligently; she had been the centre of an adoring crowd of dogs and gardeners; and for some days--not all this fortnight, indeed, but the bigger and earlier half of it--she had been completely happy in her own mild ruminative manner. It had been a source of great satisfaction to compare the rival merits of the two systems: London on the one hand; on the other, being in disgrace. For the sight of the hot square garden, she had here this cool, green lawn; for the riband of dull wood pavement up Grosvenor Street, the silver line of the Thames; for the companionship of languid and heated mankind, the eager dogs; and for the hopeless tedium of a ball, the cool vast night pouring in through the open windows of the drawing-room.