The Duchess hesitated.
"Suppose you come a little walk with me in the wood," she said, at last, gathering up her white skirts.
Meredith obeyed her. They were away for half an hour, and when they returned the journalist's face, flushed and furrowed with thought, was not very easy to read.
Nor was his temper in good condition. It required a climb to the very top of Monte Crocione to send him back, more or less appeased, a consenting player in the Duchess's game. For if there are men who are flirts and egotists--who ought to be, yet never are, divined by the sensible woman at a glance--so also there are men too well equipped for this wicked world, too good, too well born, too desirable.
It was in this somewhat flinty and carping mood that Meredith prepared himself for the advent of Jacob Delafield.
But when Delafield appeared, Meredith's secret antagonisms were soon dissipated. There was certainly no challenging air of prosperity about the young man.
At first sight, indeed, he was his old cheerful self, always ready for a walk or a row, on easy terms at once with the Italian servants or boatmen. But soon other facts emerged--stealthily, as it were, from the concealment in which a strong man was trying to keep them.
"That young man's youth is over," said Meredith, abruptly, to the Duchess one evening. He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who was pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower terraces of the garden.
The Duchess showed a teased expression.