The visit to Wilverley, postponed on account of Mrs. Rockram’s illness, duly took place. By this time Grimshaw was unable to disguise from himself that Cicely had become The Woman. Without being squeamishly modest, he could not believe that he was regarded by the maid as “The Man.” A romantic situation might be heightened, if it could be recorded that Cicely was The First Woman. She was nothing of the kind. But to a man of imaginative temperament The First Woman is reincarnated in her successors. The ideal survives. The elusive She approaches, beguiles, and vanishes. Nevertheless, somewhere, some day, she may reappear and be captured. A counterfeit presentment of Cicely had jilted Grimshaw rather cruelly just before he buried himself in Essex. Babbington-Raikes, sound psychologist, may have reflected that Champions of the Poor and Oppressed are fashioned more easily out of men whose personal ambitions have suffered eclipse. The gentlemen of the Lost Legion are the finest fighters in the world.

Memories of the jilt still rankled. Like Cicely, she had shone brightly as a young lady of quality, a brilliant of many facets. Shamelessly breaking her engagement, she had married a rubber potentate who had found a fortune and lost a liver in the Malay Peninsula. “O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!” Now, he could thank God that she was not his, and laugh derisively at his infatuation for her. But how she had bewitched him!

His host at Wilverley welcomed Grimshaw with cordiality, and showed him the model estate of the county, discussing eagerly plans for its further improvement.

“And it pays, it pays,” he repeated several times. “You can take a squint at my books if you like.”

“I’m sure it pays,” Grimshaw replied.

Wilverley’s father had been an ironmaster, who had bought an impoverished property and was frowned on at first as a carpet-bagger by the county families. They eyed him more favourably after Gladstone ennobled him, and smiled approval when he became a Liberal-Unionist. As a man of great executive ability he had applied business methods to agriculture, scrapping obsolete machinery and buildings. His son—so Grimshaw decided—seemed to have inherited his father’s business aptitudes without his disabilities. Wilverley waxed confidential after dinner.

“My father had a rotten digestion: bad grub when he was a kid. I can digest anything—anything. The main trouble in the rural districts is insufficient food, vilely cooked and poor in quality. I see to it that my people are fed as well as my horses. Food and shelter, there you have it in tabloid form. No able-bodied young men emigrate from here.”

Grimshaw listened, impressed by his host’s energy and cocksureness. Obviously, this was a man who got what he wanted, because he wanted it with a restless passion for achievement that couldn’t be denied. But the professional eye, noting a heightened colour after meals, began to doubt the assumption that Lord Wilverley could digest anything.

A luscious opulence characterised the immense house throughout, a Victorian splendour of brocade, gilt cornices, mirrors, French polish, and Axminster carpets. In effective contrast, Wilverley wore shabby tweeds, and might have been mistaken by a short-sighted stranger for one of his own less prosperous tenants. The amount of work he accomplished in twenty-four hours amazed Grimshaw, who knew what hard work was. How much time would be left to cherish a wife?

Wilverley spoke with entire frankness about the Chandos family.

“The good old sort, but reactionary; always have been. The prettiest place in the country run abominably to seed. You have your work cut out there. Pawley, I take it, will soon retire ... and then ...?”

He stared fixedly at Grimshaw.

“I may retire first,” said Grimshaw.

“Then I’m mistaken in my man,” declared Wilverley, almost explosively.

“I know when I’m beaten, Lord Wilverley.” He added quietly: “But I shan’t throw up the sponge yet. Miss Chandos is not reactionary.”

“Miss Chandos?” Wilverley frowned slightly. “Hardly out!”

“She counts.”

“Miss Chandos will marry. And, if I know her, she would never run counter to her mother. Don’t make trouble between them, I beg you. She sided with us the other evening merely out of a girlish desire to ginger up a rather dull dinner.”

Grimshaw remained silent, and Wilverley began to talk about the war, which, in his opinion, couldn’t last long, K. of K. to the contrary. Soldiers were rank pessimists. Business interests would be paramount. Civilisation wouldn’t tolerate the dislocation of industry ... and so forth.

Next morning Grimshaw left early, after promising to come again. He had liked his host, reckoning him, quite rightly, to be an honest man and a capable. He recalled a platitude often on the lips of his father: “We are sent into this world to better it.” According to this gauge, Wilverley had “made good.” And a wife, with a sense of humour, would round off his corners, trim his quills, and conciliate his unfriends. But probably she would give even more than she would get.

He reflected, not without bitterness, upon what Cicely Chandos would get if she took Wilverley.