“I’d study that fellow, if I had the chance.”

“You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse temper than most of them.”

Beauchamp shook Lydiard’s hand, saying, “The widow?”

“There’s no woman like her!”

“Well, now you’re free—why not? I think I put one man out of the field.”

“Too early! Besides—”

“Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.”

“When shall you go down to Bevisham?”

“When? I can’t tell: when I’ve gone through fire. There never was a home for me like the cottage, and the old man, and the dear good girl—the best of girls! if you hadn’t a little spoilt her with your philosophy of the two sides of the case.”

“I’ve not given her the brains.”