Mrs. Lenoir's boast was not without warrant; in the course of her life she had held her own against men in more than one hard fight. She admired another woman who could do the same. In her refugee from the West Kensington studio she rejoiced to find not a sentimental penitent nor an emotional wreck, but a woman scarred indeed with wounds, but still full of fight, acknowledging a blunder, but not crushed by it, both resolved and clearly able to make a life for herself still and to enjoy it. She hailed in Winnie, too, the quality which her own career had taught her both to recognize and to value—that peculiarly feminine attractiveness which was the best weapon in her sex's battles; Winnie fought man with her native weapons, not with an equipment borrowed from the male armoury and clumsily or feebly handled. Under the influence of this sex-sympathy pity had passed into admiration, and admiration into affection, during the weeks which had elapsed since she brought Winnie to her roof.

Her ethical code was pagan, as perhaps is already evident. When she hated, she hurt if she could; when she loved, she helped—she would not have quarrelled with the remark that she deserved no credit for it. She was by now intent on helping Winnie, on giving her a fresh start, on obliterating the traces of defeat, and on co-operating in fresh manoeuvres which should result in victory. But to this end some strategy was needful. Not only other people, but Winnie herself had to be managed, and there was need of tact in tiding over an awkward period of transition. As a subsidiary move towards the latter object, Mrs. Lenoir projected a sojourn abroad; in regard to the former she had to be on her guard against two sets of theories—the world's theories about Winnie, which might perhaps find disciples in her own particular friends, the General and his son, Major Merriam, and Winnie's theories about the world, which had before now led their adherent into a rashness that invited, and in the end had entailed, disaster.

She had pleasant memories of Madeira, which she had visited many years ago under romantic circumstances. She outlined a tour which should begin with that island, include a sea-trip thence to Genoa, and end up with a stay at the Italian lakes. On the day that Winnie spent at Shaylor's Patch she sketched out this plan to her friend, the General.

"Upon my word, it sounds uncommonly pleasant. I should like to come with you, but I don't want to leave Bertie for so long, now he's at home for once."

"No, of course you don't." For reasons of her own, she preferred that any suggestion should come from him.

The General pondered, then smiled rather roguishly. "What would you say, Clara, if two handsome young officers turned up at Madeira, for a few days anyhow? Just to bask in the sun, you know?"

"I should say that two handsome young women wouldn't be much annoyed."

"By Jove, I'll suggest it to Bertie!" All right—so long as it was the General who suggested it!

Mrs. Lenoir smiled at him. "Of course it would be very pleasant." A slight emphasis on the last word suggested that, if there were any reasons to weigh against the obvious pleasantness, they were matters for her friend's consideration, not for hers. If he chose to go out of his way to expose his eldest son to the fascination of a young woman about whom he knew nothing at all, it was his own look out. By now there was no doubt that Bertie Merriam was quite conscious of the fascination, though by no means yet dominated by it.

"We should make a very harmonious quartette," the General declared. "I shall certainly suggest it to Bertie."

"Oh, well, you must see how it strikes him. Remember, he may prefer the gaieties of London. Don't press him on our account!" She would not in any way invite; she preserved the attitude of a kindly, but not an eager, acquiescence in any decision at which Bertie might arrive. But she was strongly of opinion that the handsome officers would turn up—on the island, and not improbably even at Southampton docks.

All this, then, was in Mrs. Lenoir's mind when Winnie came back from Shaylor's Patch, her thoughts still occupied with two questions. One related to Dick Dennehy; it was a private matter and did not concern her hostess. But the problem of conduct which she had submitted to the Aikenheads did. On that she was bound in loyalty to consult Mrs. Lenoir. That lady had indeed given an opinion once, but circumstances alter cases. As she ate her dinner, she described humorously the difference of opinion between husband and wife, putting the case in the abstract, of course, without explicit reference to the Major, and taking the liberty of implying that it was Stephen who had initiated the debate. These concessions to modesty and discretion scarcely deceived Mrs. Lenoir, though she accepted them decorously. Both women knew that it was Bertie Merriam who might make a settlement of the point necessary before many days, or, at all events, many weeks, were out.

Worldly-wise Mrs. Lenoir took up a middle position. She was not prepared for Tora's uncompromising doctrine; yet she agreed with the view that there was much to be said for telling people what they might probably find out—and find out too late in their own opinion. All the same, she dissented from Stephen's extreme application of the rule of candour.

"You wouldn't accept a man without telling him, but you needn't blurt it out to anybody who makes you a few pretty speeches."

"Wouldn't it be fair to tell him before he got much in love?"

"If he wasn't much in love, he'd be rather inclined to smile over your telling him, wouldn't he?"

The suggestion went home to Winnie. "I shouldn't want to risk that."

"Unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary, I should let things stay as they are till your case is over, at all events. It'll be so much pleasanter for you to be incog. till then."

There was something in that suggestion too. Not great on theory, Mrs. Lenoir took good practical points.

"It's rather giving up my point of view," Winnie objected.

Mrs. Lenoir smiled in a slightly contemptuous kindness. "Oh, my poor child, take a holiday from your point of view, as well as from all the rest of it. And really it's quixotic of you to be so much afraid of giving some man or other a little shock, after all they've made you suffer."

Winnie felt the appeal to the cause of the sex also. In short all Mrs. Lenoir's points told; they seemed full of workaday wisdom and reasonable common-sense.

"Just don't think about it again till after the case. Promise me."

"That is best, I think, in the end. Yes, I promise, Mrs. Lenoir."

Mrs. Lenoir said nothing about the possibility of the two officers 'turning up' at Madeira—or at Southampton docks. Diplomacy forbade; the connection would have been too rudely obvious; it might have led Winnie to reconsider her pledge. In fact things were so managed—mainly by a policy of masterly inactivity, tempered by just one hint to the General—that the first Winnie heard of this idea came neither from Mrs. Lenoir nor from the General, but from Bertie Merriam himself. Emanating from that quarter, the suggestion could not be brusquely repelled; it was bound to meet with courteous consideration. Indeed, to refuse to accept it would be extremely difficult. To Mrs. Lenoir Winnie might have avowed the only possible objection; she could not so much as hint at it to the Major. Mrs. Lenoir knew her way about, as the colloquial phrase has it.

Winnie's relations with Bertie Merriam had now reached the stage which a mature and retrospective judgment, though not, of course, the heat of youth, may perhaps declare to be the pleasantest that can exist between man and woman—a congenial friendship coloured into a warmer tint by admiration on the one side and a flattered recognition of it on the other. Winnie's recent experience raised recognition to the height of gratification, almost to that of gratitude. Not only her theory had suffered at Godfrey Ledstone's hands; deny it though she might, her vanity also had been wounded. She welcomed balms, and smiled kindly on any who would administer them. After an unfortunate experience in love, people are said often to welcome attentions from a new-comer 'out of pique'; it is likely that the motive is less often vexation with the offender than gratitude to the successor, who restores pride and gives back to life its potentiality of pleasure. This was Winnie's mood. She was willing to take Mrs. Lenoir's advice not merely on the specific point on which it was offered. She was willing to accept it all round—willing, so far as she could, to forget her theories and her point of view, as well as what they had entailed upon her. She wanted to enjoy the pleasant things of life for awhile; one could not be playing apostle or martyr all the time! She was ready to see what this new episode, this journey and this holiday, had to offer; she was not unwilling to see how much she might be inclined to like Major Merriam. Yet all this is to analyse her far more than she analysed herself. In her it was, in reality, the youthful blood moving again, the rebound from sorrow, the reassertion of the right of her charms and its unimpeded exercise. Such a mood is not one where the finer shades of scruple are likely to prevail; it is too purely a natural and primitive movement of mind and body. Besides, Winnie could always, as Mrs. Lenoir reminded her, soothe a qualm of conscience by a staggering tu quoque launched against the male sex in general.

Again, in an unconscious and blindly instinctive way, she was a student of human nature, and rather a head-strong one. She did not readily rest in ignorance about people, or even find repose in doubt. She liked to search, test, classify, and be guided by the result. Her history showed it. She had tested Cyril Maxon, classified him, and acted on her conclusion. She had experimented on Godfrey Ledstone, classified him, found that she had miscalculated, paid the expense of an unsuccessful experiment, and accepted the issue of it. Here, now, was new material—men of a kind to whom her experience had not previously introduced her in any considerable degree of intimacy. She might often have dined in the company of such; but under Maxon's roof real knowledge of other men was not easily come by.

Men of views and visions, men of affairs and ambitions, men of ease and pleasure—among these her lot had been cast since she left her father's house. The Merriams were pre-eminently men of duty. They had their opinions, and both took their recreations with a healthy zest; but the Service was as the breath of their nostrils. The General was the cleverer soldier of the two, as the Kala Kin Expedition bore witness. The son was not likely ever to command more than a regiment or, at most, a brigade; higher distinctions must be left to the second brother. Bertie's enthusiasm corresponded nicely with his gifts. He adored the regiment, and in due course a few months would see him Lieutenant-Colonel; if only the regiment could see service under his command, how joyously would he sing his Nunc dimittis, with duty done and his name on an honourable roll!

Winnie sat regarding his pleasant tanned face, his sincere pale blue eyes, and his very well-made clothes, with a calm satisfaction. She had been hearing a good deal about the regiment, but the gossip amused her.

"And where do the officers' wives—I suppose some of you have wives?—come in?" she asked.

"Oh, they're awfully important, Miss Wilson. The social tone depends so much on them. You see, with a parcel of young chaps—the subalterns, you know—well, you do see, don't you?"

"Well, I think I can see that, Major Merriam. They mustn't flirt with the subalterns? At any rate, not too much?"

"That's rotten. But they ought to teach them their manners."

"Ought to be motherly? You don't look as if that sounded quite right! Elder-sisterly?"

"That's more like it, Miss Wilson."

He said 'Miss Wilson' rather often, or so it struck Winnie—just as Bob Purnett used to say 'Mrs. Ledstone' much too often. He gave her another little jar the next moment. He left the subject of officers' wives, and leant forward to her with an ingratiating yet rather apologetic smile.

"I say, do you know what the General has had the cheek to suggest to your cousin?"

Winnie had forgotten her cue. "My cousin?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Why, Mrs. Lenoir! She is your cousin, isn't she?"

The lie direct Winnie disliked. Yet could she betray her benefactress? "It's so awfully distant that I forget the cousin in the friend," she said, with an uneasy little laugh. "But what has the General had the cheek—your phrase, not mine—to suggest to Mrs. Lenoir?" She seemed to have forgotten the cousin again, for she said 'Mrs. Lenoir,' not 'Cousin Clara.' As, however, the Major had never heard her say anything else, the point did not attract his notice.

"Why, that we four might make a party of it as far as Madeira. Nice little place, though I suppose it won't be as lively now as it was when the war was going on."

"It sounds delightful."

"I've got a paper to read to the Naval and Military Institute in six weeks' time. I could just fit it in—and write the thing out there, you know."

"We'd all help you," said Winnie.

The Major detected raillery. "I should have a go at it before you were up in the morning."

"Oh, well, then I must be content with the humble function of helping to relax your mind afterwards."

"But you wouldn't mind our coming?"

"You don't appreciate how fond I am of the General."

"Well, he half-worships you, Miss Wilson. And you'll put up with my company for his sake?"

"He's too distinguished a man to carry the rugs and cushions."

"You can fag me as much as you like on board. The difficulty is to get enough moving about."

"On that distinct understanding, I won't veto the party, Major Merriam." She laughed. "But, of course, I've really got nothing to say to it. It's for Mrs. Lenoir to decide, isn't it?"

Bertie Merriam felt that he had obtained permission, but hardly encouragement—just as the General was convinced that he had made a suggestion and not received one. But permission was enough.

"I shall tell the General I've squared you," he said, beaming. "There are jolly excursions to be made, you know. You can either ride, or be carried in a hammock——"

"I wonder if Mrs. Lenoir will care for the excursions!"

"Well, if the seniors want to take it easy, we could do them together, couldn't we, Miss Wilson?"

"To be sure we could," smiled Winnie. "More rugs and cushions for you! Won't it be what you call fatigue duty?"

"I'll take it on," he declared. "I don't shirk work in a good cause, you know."

One thing about him surprised Winnie, while it also pleased her. Obviously he considered her witty. She had never been accustomed to take that view of herself. Cyril Maxon would have been amazed at it. Though Stephen Aikenhead now and then gave her credit for a hit, her general attitude towards him was that of an inquirer or a disciple, and disciples may not becomingly bandy witticisms with their masters. Because Bertie Merriam visibly enjoyed—without attempting to equal—her fencing, she began to enjoy it herself. Nay, more, she began to rely on it. No less than her staggering tu quoque to the male sex, it might serve, at a pinch, to quiet a qualm of conscience. "I can always keep him at his distance." That notion in her mind helped to minimize any scruples to which his admiration, the expedition, the excursions, the rugs and the cushions, might give rise. For if fencing can accord permission, it can surely also refuse it? If the Merriams were anything in this world, they were gentlemen. In matters of the heart a gentleman need not be very clever to take a hint; he feels it.

But the most dexterous soother of qualms and scruples was Mrs. Lenoir. Her matter-of-fact treatment of the joint excursion shamed Winnie out of making too much of it. What reason was there to suppose that Bertie would fall in love? A pleasant passing flirtation perhaps—and why not? Moreover—here the subject was treated in a more general way, though the special application was not obscure—suppose he did! What did it matter? Men were always falling in love, and falling out of it again. A slight shrug of still shapely shoulders reduced these occurrences to their true proportions. Finally she took occasion to hint that Bertie Merriam was not what he himself would call 'pious.' He accepted the religion of his caste and country as he found it; he conformed to its observances and had an honest uninquiring belief in its dogmas. It was to him a natural side of life and an integral part of regimental discipline—much, in fact, as church-going was to Alice Aikenhead, at school. But there was no reason to suppose that he would carry it to extremes, or consider that it could ask more of him than the law asked. So far as the law went, all objections would vanish in a few months. Strong in her influence over the General, Mrs. Lenoir foresaw, in the event of the falling in love coming to pass, a brief trouble and a happy ending. The second was well worth the first. In fact she was by now set on her project—on the fresh start and the good match for Winnie. She was ready to forward it in every way she could, by diplomacy, by hard fighting if need be, by cajolery, and, finally, by such an endowment for Winnie as would remove all hindrances of a financial order. Though most of her money was sunk in an annuity, she could well afford to make Winnie's income up to four hundred a year—not a despicable dower for the wife of a regimental officer. With three sons in the army the General was not able to make very handsome allowances; the four hundred would be welcome with a bride.

She would have been interested to overhear a conversation which took place between the General and his son while they were dining together at Bertie's club two days before the expedition was to set out. The General filled his glass of port and opened the subject.

"Bertie, my boy, you ought to get married," he said. "A C.O., as you will be soon, ought to have a wife. It's good for the regiment, in my opinion—though some men think otherwise, as I'm aware—and it makes it much less likely that a man will get into any scrape on his own account—a thing a bachelor's always liable to do, and in these days a much more serious matter than it used to be."

The General, at least, did not sound unpracticably 'pious.' Mrs. Lenoir might take comfort.

Bertie Merriam blushed a little through his tan. "Well, to tell the truth, I have been just sort of thinking about it—in a kind of way, you know."

"Anybody special in your eye?" asked the General.

"It's rather early days to give it away," Bertie pleaded.

"Yes, yes. I quite see, my boy. I beg your pardon. But I'm very glad to hear what you say. I know you'll choose a good girl—and a pretty one too, I'll lay odds! I won't ask any more. A little bit of money wouldn't hurt, of course. Take your own time, Bertie, and I'll wait." Thus the General ostensibly passed from the subject. But after finishing his glass and allowing it to be refilled, he remarked, "I'm looking forward to our jaunt, Bertie. It was a happy idea of mine, wasn't it? I shall enjoy talking to Clara—I always do—and you'll be happy with little Miss Wilson. I like her—I like her very much. Of course, twenty years ago it wouldn't have been wise for Clara to chaperon her, but at this time of day it's all forgotten. Only old fogies like me remember anything about it. It oughtn't to prejudice the girl in any sensible man's eyes."

He exchanged a glance with his son. Nothing explicit was said. But a question had been answered which Bertie had desired to put. It was now quite clear to him that, if he were desirous of courting Miss Winnie Wilson, he need expect no opposition from the General.

"I'm quite with you there, father. It would be very unfair to Miss Wilson."

With what mind would Mrs. Lenoir—and Miss Wilson—have overheard the conversation? Might they have recognized that they were not giving quite such fair treatment as was being accorded to them? Or would Winnie's theories and her ability to launch a staggering tu quoque, and Mrs. Lenoir's practical points of difficulty, still have carried the day? It is probable that they would. Taken all together, they were very powerful, and Stephen Aikenhead's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour could hardly have prevailed.

Father and son walked home, arm in arm. The talk of his son's marriage, the prospect of his son's commanding his regiment, moved the old soldier to unwonted feeling.

"I shall be a proud man when I can boast of two Colonels—and if that scamp George'll stick to work, he ought to give me a third before many years are over. There's no finer billet in the world than the command of a regiment—no position in which you can do more good, in my opinion, or serve the King to better purpose. And a good wife can help you, as I said—help you a lot."

He pressed his son's arm and added, "Only you mustn't let her interfere with your work. The regiment must still come first in everything, Bertie—aye, even before your wife! That's the rule of the Service."