* * * * * * * *
In the train, on the way to town, she felt happier. Things were falling out as she wished. It was unconsciously that she was acting with such surpassing selfishness. She did not tell herself that she was fencing herself with an engagement in order to be free to gratify her ambition. She did not even know that at the back of her mind lay the treacherous thought that, when Lone Ash was built, Lance might be thrown over. But a deeper self-knowledge would have shown her that this was what she really intended. Her mind just now was full of dreams: but they were in stone and mortar. Visions of corbie-stepped gables, of oriel windows, of mullions, drip-stones and other bewitching details, would keep coming in between her and Lance's scholarly, boyish face opposite. She and he were at one end of the carriage, the Helstons, with newspapers ostentatiously spread, at the other.
Lancelot was a good deal elated and somewhat thrown off his balance by the great fact of his engagement. He arrived at the railway station brimful of the idea of writing to his paper to decline the St. Petersburg mission. He was terribly dashed at first by his fiancée's warm opposition to this idea.
"You can't care for me, if you can coolly face the idea of my being away till the end of June!" he cried.
"I never pretended to care for you in that emotional kind of way; I'm not emotional," said Millie, with calmness. "I care with my mind, and I like a man to go and do his duty, not to hang round a woman's apron-string. Look how soldiers and sailors have to part from the women they love! You have your name to make in the world."
"I see your point of view," said the lover wistfully, "but it is a little hard to go off and leave you so soon. I'm—I'm very much in love, you know, darling. You are the kind of girl men do make fools of themselves for."
Melicent sighed. Perhaps she was thinking of a certain cup of coffee streaming down a man's face and shirt, and the fight that ensued on that swift insult.
"I tell you honestly, Lance, I'm not in love with you," she said. "It's no use pretending."
He was silent, giving her only an ardent look—a look that she resented.
But she told herself, a man is only in love for such a short time. It is the kind of thing a woman must tolerate and allow until the brief madness passes. Now with regard to Bert, she doubted if such well-recognised rules would hold. He might easily prove capable of being in love all his life, which made him inexcusable. Her fancy ran off again upon this tack, till she was recalled by hearing Lance say: