BY THE TIME COBBLESTONE, THE BUTLER, THREW OPEN THE sitting-room door to announce Sir William, I was moved to greet the magistrate's white-haired head with almost violent relief. For my morning was a trial in forbearance — one I have resolved to offer up to my Maker as expiation for a twelvemonth of sins.

Fitzroy Payne was closeted in his library over some letters of business, the Hearst brothers remained in their companionable bachelor cottage down the lane, while Fanny Delahoussaye kept to the upstairs sitting room with her mother and her sketching book — in horrified anticipation, one may assume, of the visits of retired barristers. Isobel I did not expect to see until eleven o'clock should strike. And so, sitting composedly by the hearth, my hands occupied with needlework and my eyes upon the clock, I was suffered to endure an hour's tête-à-tête with Lord Harold Trowbridge. From closer observation, I may declare that I have learned to despise the man's cunning manner.

Most in the Scargrave household suffer his presence with distant politeness that signals a profound dislike, and a wish that he should be gone; but it is an atmosphere to which Lord Harold appears utterly impervious. He might almost be enjoying a holiday among friends, unmarked by calamitous events, rather than hovering like a dark raven on the edge of so much that is disturbing and intimate to the family. I have managed to avoid his company, and rejoiced in my escape; but this morning he appeared to have too little to occupy his time, and seemed almost to profit from my discomfiture at being shut up with him in the sitting-room.

I was already established a quarter-hour on the settee by the fire when he threw open the door and, after a quick glance to observe that I was alone, strode purposefully into the room. I acknowledged his presence with an indifferent nod, and hoped that studied application to my needle, and a dearth of conversation, should drive him away in but a few moments. I bent, accordingly, to my work, and knew not where he went in the room, or how he intended to employ his time. My industry was rather to be reviled than rewarded, however. Setting down his book upon the sitting-room table with a bang, Lord Harold threw himself onto the settee at my side, and affected to scrutinise my effort from under his hooded eyes — as a fond lover might his dearest darling's. After some seconds, unable to bear so painful a burlesque, but wishing anything rather than to cede such a man the room, I cast aside my work and stared at him balefully. Any gentleman should have recognised his impropriety, and hastened to relieve my distress; but not Lord Harold.

“It is as I thought,” he declared, sitting back coolly and throwing his long legs across the hearth rug. “You secretly despise the insipidity of women's work, and abandon it when the first opportunity serves. Shall I shower you with contempt, Miss Austen, for failing in the accomplishment of your sisters, or admire you the more for exposing it as the tedium it truly is?”

“You may do me neither the honour nor the injustice, Lord Harold, of offending my sex and its pursuits,” I replied. “Say rather I was incommoded by the proximity of so much silent regard, and the invasion of my privacy, and I will find some means to agree with you.”

“You think it so unlikely we should see eye to eye, Miss Austen?”

“I should imagine, Lord Harold, that we two must always be looking in opposite directions — so dissimilar and incongenial are our concerns.”

“Your opinion of me is decidedly formed for so short an acquaintance!”

“Then we need not prolong it for the improvement of my views.” I gathered up my silks and needle, and exchanged the settee for a chair at some remove from Lord Harold — and thus, unfortunately, from the fire. Scargrave is a draughty place, and the expanse of sitting-room but poorly heated.

“Miss Austen! Did I not know you to be a woman of open and easy temper, I should imagine you wished me to be off.” To my dismay, he crossed the room in my wake, and hung over the back of my chair — of a purpose, I suppose, to disturb me further. There was nothing for it — I must either seek my chamber above, or use my purgatory to better purpose. Lord Harold remained at Scargrave for only one reason — to wrest Crosswinds from Isobel's shaken hands — and the rogue deserved no courtesy. A frontal assault, therefore, was in order.

“I do wonder at your being so good as to spend Christmas among the Scargrave family, Lord Harold,” I replied. “A man of your position must have so many obligations and competing claims among your acquaintance, that to devote so lengthy a period to one must be felt a singular honour.”

“That it is regarded as singular, I do not doubt,” he said, with a thin-lipped smile. “But in this we are very much of a piece, Miss Austen, for I observe you feel no more compelled to depart for home and family than do I.”

“I should have been gone already,” I replied, searching among my silks for a bit of red, the better to work a robin's breast, “but for the Countess.”

“How charming! And how amusing that I may justly say the same — but for the Countess, I should have been gone days ago. I would that our objectives were equally benign, Miss Austen; but alas, they cannot be. And so we are ranged the one against the other, you and I — you, her light angel, stand firm against all the fury of my dark one.” He moved to the fire and stood looking into its depths. The flickering light sharpened the planes of his face and threw his eyes into further shadow, so that his expression became if possible more remote and inscrutable. Gazing upon it, I felt for the first time truly afraid.

“I do not pretend to understand you, my lord,” I said with effort, and applied myself to my needlework.

“I imagine you understand me very well, Miss Austen,” he rejoined quietly, “and I confess to disappointment at your retreat into convention. It is unworthy of your intelligence and penetration.”

“What can you know of either, my lord?”

“A great deal, when opportunity to observe is afforded me. But too often you run away at my approach, and would deny me the felicity of your wit.”

“Say rather that I choose better company, Lord Harold, and I shall deign it to be possible.”

“Capital, Miss Austen! Parry stroke for stroke. I would that the Countess Scargrave were so deft in her opposition.”

“Lord Harold,” I said, summoning my courage, “I cannot profess to know all the particulars of what is toward between yourself and Lady Scargrave. It is right that I should remain in ignorance of affairs so delicate and so disputed. But I would ask you, my lord, why you persist in your efforts, having professed them to be ranged on the side of the Devil? In saying as much, are not you bound by honour, by better feeling, by all that is in your power as a peer and a gentleman, to desist? *

In reply, he threw back his head and laughed, and at that moment Cobblestone entered upon the scene, my venerable deliverer. Behind the butler stood Sir William Reynolds and Isobel.

“Lord Harold,” Sir William said, bowing towards the fireplace, “Miss Austen. The Countess and I would speak with you alone, my dear Jane, and so I must ask Lord Harold to leave us.”

“I believe I have outworn Miss Austen's patience in any event,” Trowbridge said, with a mocking smile, and bowed low in my direction. “I look forward to trying it again, when opportunity serves.” And with a nod for Sir William, and a courtesy to Isobel, he achieved the hall, to my mingled relief and chagrin.

“A more teasing man I have never encountered!” I exclaimed, when he had gone. “He finds his sole diversion in tormenting and vexing others, as a cat will toss a bird between its paws before the kill.”

“An apt image, my dear Jane,” Isobel murmured, looking towards the door through which her enemy had vanished; “I have reason to know well its meaning. But I would that you had been spared his company.”