Drake repeated his question to Fielding two days later, after a dinner with Conway at his club, but in a tone of languid interest.
'Why don't you ask Mallinson?' said Fielding. 'He knows her better than I do.'
Conway contested the assertion with some heat.
'Besides,' added Drake, 'his imagination may have been at work. About women, I prefer the estimate of a man of the world.'
The phrase was distasteful to a gentleman whose ambition it was to live and to be recognised as living within view of, but outside the world, say just above it in a placid atmosphere of his own creation. Fielding leaned back in his chair to mete out punishment, joining the finger-tips with an air of ordering a detailed statement.
'The inhabitants of Sark,' he began, 'were from immemorial times notable not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and the Gouliot channel, where snags are numerous, and gathered in their harvest in the morning.
'But,' Drake interrupted, 'what on earth has that to do with—'
'Miss Le Mesurier? A great deal, as you will see if you listen patiently. Lloyd's at that time had not been invented, and the Sarkese were consequently unpopular with the trading community, and in the reign of Henry the—well, the particular Henry is immaterial—an irate band of merchants sailed from Winchelsea on a trip. They depopulated Sark in a single night, as they thought. But they were mistaken. One family escaped their attention,—the Le Mesuriers, who were the custodians of the silver mines—' At this point Conway broke in with an impatient laugh. Fielding turned a quiet eye upon him and repeated in an even voice, 'Who were the custodians of the silver mines, and lived under the shelter of a little cliff close by the main shaft. When Helier de Carteret, who, you know,' and he inclined suavely towards Conway, 'was Seigneur of somewhere or other in Jersey, came a few years later to colonise Sark, he found the Le Mesuriers in possession, and while he confiscated the mines, he allowed them to retain their ancient dignity of custodians.'
'Fudge!' said Conway rudely. Fielding waved a deprecating hand and continued:
'Living where they did, it is not to be wondered at that the Le Mesuriers became gradually rich, and the De Carterets gradually poor, so that when the latter family was compelled to place the Seigneurie of Sark upon the market, the Le Mesuriers were the highest bidders. The Le Mesuriers thus became Seigneurs of Sark. But with their position they reversed their conduct, and, instead of taking other people's money out of mines, they put their own in, with the result that they sustained embarrassing losses. I mention these details incidentally to show that Miss Le Mesurier of to-day is directly descended from ancestors of predatory instincts, who did not go a-hunting for victims, but unobtrusively attracted them in a passive, lazy way which was none the less effectual.'