Grimshaw returned to the Rockram cottage much the better for his talk with Pawley, but conscious, also, that a wise old man was not optimistic in regard to his chances. He had the wit and the will to plead his case strongly. The real issue, so he reflected, lay between strength and obstinacy.

Mrs. Rockram was awaiting him.

“You made a pore dinner, sir, and I thought, maybe, you’d fancy some nice hot soup.”

“Bless your kind heart, I do.”

As he ate his soup, she hovered about him, eager to talk over the fire and the soul-stirring events on the green. Knowing her to be a faithful servant of the House of Chandos and devoted to its mistress, he yielded to the temptation to draw from her some expression of opinion. Obviously she sided with Authority.

“My lady’ll never be the same again, never!”

“In what way do you think she will change?”

“The ingratitude of ’em’ll eat into her bones.”

“Ah! Lady Selina used that word.”

Mrs. Rockram expressed the positive opinion that no other word could be used by a perfect lady. Emboldened by Grimshaw’s silence, she went on:

“I know my place, sir, but I did pass the remark to Rockram: ‘Her ladyship’ll up and leave us,’ I says, ‘to stew in our own sauce.’”

“I can’t see her ladyship outside Upworthy.”

“Maybe. But I have seen her. In my day we went to London every year.”

“And am I to infer, Mrs. Rockram, that her ladyship is a different woman away from Upworthy?”

Mrs. Rockram rebuked him delicately.

“A lady, like my lady, is a lady wherever she may be. But in the room we used to remark that her ladyship in town was different.”

“In what way? This is interesting.”

“Rockram was butler in them days. The little I knows I gets from him. My lady took things easier in Curzon Street, never fussed like. Very popular she was, too, with the crÊme de la crÊme.”

“I dare say your good cooking had something to do with that.”

“Maybe. There was no pinching in those days—the best of everything. And no trouble neither. The best came to the kitchen door.”

“It doesn’t now, not even in London.”

“Well, sir, all I says is that my lady is at the age when peace and comfort come first. If she can’t get ’em here, she’ll go elsewhere; and quite right, too.”

Left alone, Grimshaw smoked a pipe before turning in. Tobacco, however, failed to soothe him. Mrs. Rockram’s words rankled. Peace and comfort! Peace at any price! With war raging over all the civilised world, who wouldn’t set an extravagant value on peace? The merely material difficulty of rebuilding her house, with every able-bodied man in khaki, might drive Lady Selina out of Upworthy. And once out, once settled in a snug town house, would she return?