Jenny’s first remark as we drove down together to Hatcham Ford seemed to have very little to do with the matter in hand.  Still less to do with it, as one would think, had the fact that, just before starting, she had ­I learned it afterwards ­given Chat a piece of handsome old lace.

“I like your name,” she remarked. “’Austin Austin’ ­quite a good idea of your parents’!  One’s only got to drop the ‘Mr.’ to be friendly at once.  No learning a strange Algernon, or Edward, or things of that kind!”

“Do drop it,” said I.

“I have, Austin,” said Jenny.  She edged ever so little nearer to me, yet looked steadily out of the window on the other side of the brougham.  “I’m frightened,” she added in a low voice.

“Upon my honor,” said I, “I don’t wonder at it.”

Such was the beginning of a remarkable kindness, a gentleness, almost an appealing attitude, which Jenny displayed during several weeks that followed.  I must not flatter myself ­Chat shared the rays of kindly sunshine.  If I were promoted to the Christian name, Chat got the lace.

“What will you call me?” she asked. “‘Miss Driver’ sounds ­Say ’Jenny’!”

“Before the county?  Impossible!”

“Well, then, when we’re alone?”

“Shall it be Lady Jenny?  For ourselves?”

She sighed acquiescence.  “You’re a great comfort to me,” she added.  “You’ll come in, won’t you, if you hear me scream?”

“Come in?”

“I’ve got to see him alone, you know.”  She raised her hands for an instant, as though in lamentation; “Oh, why is he like that?”

There was no treating this lightly ­for one who felt for her what I did.  I was no such fool as not to see that her sudden access of graciousness had a purpose ­I had to be conciliated and stroked the right way for some reason; so doubtless had Chat.  But again I was, so I humbly trust, no such churl as to resent the purpose ­though I did not know precisely what it was.  I was her ‘man,’ as the old word was ­her vassal.  If my liking or my honor refused that situation, well and good ­I could end it.  While it lasted, I was hers.  Within me the thing went deeper still than that.

She was frightened.  Therefore she was very gracious, seeking allies however humble.  I declare that I have always limited my expectation of attachments entirely disinterested.  Are there any?  Who cherishes a friend from whom there is neither profit nor pleasure to be had?  Or, at any rate, from whom neither has been had?  The past obligation is often acknowledged ­and acquitted ­with a five-pound note.

The westering sun caught her face through the window as we entered the outskirts of Catsford; her eyes looked like a couple of new sovereigns.

“Yes, I’m frightened.”

“Not you!  You’ve courage enough for a dozen.”

“Ah, I like you to say that!  But I must make terms with him, you know.”  She caught and pressed my hand.  “But I don’t believe I’m quite a coward.”

All this could mean but one thing ­Octon had a great hold on her; yet against him was a powerful incentive.  Between the two ­between his power, which was great, and the power against him whose greatness she had acknowledged to Fillingford that morning, she must patch up conditions of peace ­a secret treaty.  I had no idea what the terms could or would be.  If Octon had the naming of them, they would not be easy.

Hatcham Ford just held its freedom against the encroaching town.  No more than fifty yards from its gates was the last villa ­a red-brick house of eccentric architecture but comfortable dimensions; its side windows looked toward the gate of the Ford, and on the left its garden ran up to the road on to which the shrubberies encircling the old house faced.  A tall oak fence surrounded the garden ­on the gate was written, in large gilt letters, “Ivydene.”  That house, like so many in Catsford, was on Jenny’s land.  I wished that Cartmell would keep a tighter hand on his builders.

Nearly swallowed by the flood of modern erections as it was, the old house still preserved its sequestered charm.  The garden was hidden from the road by a close screen in front; at the back it ran gently down to the murmuring river.  Within were low ceilings crossed by old beams, and oak paneling everywhere.  Octon’s tenancy and personality were marked by clusters of barbaric spears and knives, hung against the oak, burnished to a high polish, flashing against their time-blackened background.

Visitors were not expected.  Octon’s man ­a small wizened fellow of full middle age ­seemed rather startled by the sight of Jenny; he hastily pushed, rather than ushered, us into the dining room, a room on the left of the doorway.  In a moment or two Octon came to us.  He stood in the doorway, his big frame looking immense under the low lintel which his head all but touched.

“You’re not the visitors I expected,” he said with a laugh.  “I’ve stayed in, waiting for Aspenick.”

“Sir John won’t come,” said Jenny.  “But I must speak to you ­alone.”  She turned to me.  “You’re sure you don’t mind, Austin?”

“Of course you must see him alone.  Where shall I go?”

“Stay here,” he said.  “We’ll go next door ­in the study.”

He held the door for her, and she went out.  I heard them enter a room next to the one in which I was; the door was shut after them.  Then for a long while I heard nothing more, except the murmur of the little river, which seemed loud to my unaccustomed ears, though probably people living in the house would soon cease to notice it.

Presently I heard their voices; his was so loud that, for fear of hearing the words, I had deliberately to abstract my mind by looking at this, that, and the other thing in the room ­more spears and knives on the walls, books about his subject on the shelves, a couple of fine old silver tankards gleaming on the mantelpiece.  The voices died down again just as I had exhausted the interest of the tankards, and taken in my hand a miniature which stood on the top of the marble clock.

His voice fell to inaudibility; the welcome silence left me alone with the little picture.  It represented a child perhaps fourteen years old ­a small, delicate face, dark in complexion, touched on the cheeks with a red flush, with large dark eyes, framed in plentiful black hair which curled about the forehead.  Whoever the young girl was, she was beautiful; her eyes seemed to gaze at me from some remote kingdom of childish purity; her lips laughed that I should feel awe at her eyes.  How in the world came she on Octon’s mantelpiece?

Picked up somewhere for half a sovereign ­as a pretty thing!  That was the suggestion of common sense, in rebellion against a certain sense of over-strained nerves under which I was conscious of suffering.  Yet, after all, Octon, like other men, must have kith and kin.  The style of the picture was too modern for it to be his mother’s.  There were such things as sisters; but this did not look like Octon’s stock.  An old picture of a bygone sweetheart ­that held the field as the likeliest explanation; well, except the one profanely offered by common sense.  Octon was, to and for me, so much a part of Jenny’s life and surroundings that it was genuinely difficult to realize him as a man with other belongings or associations; yet I could not but recognize that in all probability he had many ­perhaps some apart from those which he might chance to have inherited.

Suddenly, through the wall, I heard a wail ­surely I heard a little sob?  The picture was instantly forgotten.  I stood intensely awake, alert, watchful.  If that sound came again, I determined that I would break in on their conference.  For minutes I waited, but the sound came no more.  I flung myself into a chair by the fire and began to smoke.  I fell into a meditation.  No further sound came to break it; the murmur of the river already grew familiar.

I heard a door open; the next moment they were in the room with me.

“What a time we’ve kept you!  Have you been very bored?” asked Jenny.

Her words and her tone were light, but her face was as I had never seen it.  It was drawn with the fatigue of deep feeling:  she had been struggling; if I did not err, her eyes bore signs of crying ­I had never known her cry.  At that moment I think I knew to the full that Octon was, for good or evil, a great thing in her life.  How could it be for good?  She herself, she alone, must bear the burden of answering that question.

But he, standing behind her, wore an unmistakable air of victory.  So confident was it, and so assured the whole aspect of his dominant figure, that I prepared myself to hear that the verdict of the morning was reversed and that the neighborhood ­and all that meant ­were to go hang.  Yet his first words contradicted both my forecast and his own appearance.  He spoke in a chafing tone.

“Behold in me, Austin, the Banished Duke!  Never again may I tread the halls of Breysgate ­at any rate, not for the present!  I have offended a proud baronet ­a belted earl demands my expulsion.  And my liege lady banishes me!”

“Don’t be so silly,” said Jenny ­but gently, ever so gently, and with a smile.

“Serves you right, in my opinion,” said I.

“I suppose so,” he answered, “and I bear no malice.  I’m glad Aspenick didn’t force me to wring his neck.  But I shall be very lonely ­nobody comes here ­well, not many are invited!  Will you drop in on the exile and smoke a pipe now and then after dinner?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll look you up.”  My tone was impatient, I know:  his burlesque was neither intelligible nor grateful to me.

“After dinner, if that suits you.  I’m going to take advantage of my solitude to work in the daytime.  The door will be barred till nine o’clock.”

I nodded ­and looked at my watch.

“Yes,” said Jenny, “we must be going.  Everything’s settled, Austin, and ­and Mr. Octon has been very kind.”

“I’m glad to hear that anyhow,” I said grumpily.  If he had been kind, why had I heard that wail?

In fact I was thoroughly puzzled ­and therefore both vexed and uneasy.  He accepted his banishment ­and yet was friendly.  That result seemed a great victory for Jenny ­yet she did not look victorious.  It was Octon who wore the air of exultation and self-satisfaction; yet he had been thrown to the wolves, abandoned to the pack of Fillingfords and Aspenicks.  Well, that could not be the whole truth of it, though what more there might be I could not guess.

He came with us down the gravel path which led from the hall door to the road, where the brougham was waiting.  Jenny pointed across the road ­where Ivydene stood with its strip of garden.

“That’s the house I meant, you know,” she said, evidently referring to something that had passed in their private conversation.

He stood smiling at her, with his hands in his pockets.  He really was, for him, ridiculously amiable, though his amiability, like everything else about him, was rough, almost boisterous.

“If you must go on with your beastly Institute,” he said, “and must have a beastly house for a beastly office, to make your beastly plans and do your other beastly work in, why, I daresay that beastly house will do as well as any other beastly house for your beastly purpose.  Only do choose beastly clerks, or whatever they’re going to be, who haven’t got any beastly children to play beastly games and make a beastly noise in the garden.”

Quite the first I had heard of this idea!  Quite the first time, too, that Leonard Octon had been so agreeable ­he meant to be agreeable, though the humor was like a schoolboy’s ­about the Institute!

“I think I’ll speak to Mr. Bindlecombe about it,” said Jenny, as she gave him her hand.  Her farewell was more than gracious; it was grateful, it was even appealing.  Nor for all my anger and vexation could I deny the real feeling in his eyes as he looked at her; he was admiring; he was affectionate; nay more, he seemed to be giving her his thanks.

She was very silent all the way home, answering only by a “yes” or a “no” the few remarks I ventured to make.  On her own account she made only one ­as the result of a long reverie.  “It’ll all blow over some day,” she said.

If it was her only observation, at least it was a characteristic one.  Jenny had a great belief in things “blowing over” ­a belief that inspired and explained much of her diplomacy.  What seemed sometimes in retrospect to have been far-sighted scheming or elaborate cunning had been in reality no more than waiting for a thing to “blow over” ­holding the balance, maintaining an artificial equilibrium by a number of clever manipulations, until things should right themselves and gain, or regain, a proper and natural basis.  The best opinion I could form of her present proceedings was that they rested on some such idea.  For the moment she banned Octon under the pressure of her other neighbors; but in time the memory of his offenses would grow dimmer ­and in time also her own position and power would be more firmly established.  Then he could come back.  She might have persuaded him into good humor by such a plea as that.  If it were so, I thought that she had misled him and perhaps deceived herself.  People have long memories for social offenses.  And ­one could not help asking the question ­what of Fillingford?  Where was he to fit in, what part was he to play?  Was a millennium to come when he was to lie down on Jenny’s hearthrug side by side with Octon?

There was a lady too many at dinner ­a man short!  Jenny could have avoided this blot on her arrangements by eliminating Chat ­and poor Chat was quite accustomed to being eliminated.  But she chose not to adopt this course.  I rather think that she liked to feel herself a bit of a martyr in the matter, but possibly she was also minded to make a little demonstration of her submission, to let them guess that Octon had been coming and that she had acted on their orders with merciless promptitude.  In other respects the party was one of her most successful.  Great as was the strain which she had been through in the afternoon, she herself was gay and sparkling.  And how they petted her!  Lady Aspenick might naturally have looked to be the heroine of the occasion ­nor had she any reason to complain of a lack of interest in her story (I had to complain of a great deal too much interest in mine) ­but it was for Jenny that the highest honors were reserved; the most joy was over the one sinner that repented.

Fillingford, of course, took her in to dinner.  It was not in the man to pay what are called “marked attentions” before the eyes of others, but his manner to her was characterized by a pronounced friendliness and deference; he seemed to be trying to atone for the coercion which he had been compelled to exert earlier in the day.  He did not fall into the mistake of treating her acquiescence as a trifle or the case as merely that of “cutting a cad,” to use Aspenick’s curtly contemptuous phrase.  He raised her action to the rank of an obligation conferred on her neighbors and especially on himself.  He was man of the world enough to convey this impression without departing too far from the habitual reserve of his demeanor.

Lady Aspenick looked at the pair through her eyeglasses; we had at last exhausted the incident of the morning ­though we had not settled the precise degree of accidentality which attached to the collision between her whip and Octon’s face; under a veiled cross-examination she had become rather vague about it ­that may weigh a little in Octon’s favor.

“It’s a long while since I’ve seen Lord Fillingford so lively,” she remarked.  “He seems to get on so well with Miss Driver.  As a rule, you know, we women despair of him.”

“Has he such a bad character among you as that?”

“He seemed to have given himself up to being old long before he need.  He’s only forty-three, I think.”  She laughed.  “There, in my heart I believe I’m matchmaking, like a true woman!”

“Yes, I believe you are.  Well, these speculations are always interesting.”

“We’re beginning to make them in the neighborhood, I can tell you, Mr. Austin.”

“And ­knowing the neighborhood ­I can believe you, Lady Aspenick.”

“You’ve no special information?” she asked, laughing.  “It would make me so important!”

“Oh, you’re important enough already ­after this morning.  And I know nothing ­absolutely nothing.”

“You mean to say Miss Driver doesn’t tell you ?”

“Actually she does not ­and I’m not sure I should know if she did.”

“Of course I’m only chaffing.  But it would be rather ­ideal.”

“H’m.  Forty-three may not be senile, but would you call it ideal?  For a romance?”

“Who’s talking of romances?  I’m on the question of marriage, Mr. Austin.”

“But if one can afford a romance?  What’s the use of being rich?”

“No, no, it’s the poor people who can go in for romance.  They’ve nothing to lose!  Divide nothing a year between two ­or, presently, four ­and still it’s no less.”

“But the rich have nothing to gain ­except romance.”

“Oh, yes, sometimes.  At the time of the Coronation I had quite a quarrel with Jack because he wasn’t a peer.  He said I ought to have thought of it before, but I said that that would have been quite disloyal.”  She lowered her voice to a discreet whisper.  “I do hope she’s not distressed about this morning?”

“A little, I’m afraid.  Octon had his interesting side for her.”

“I’m so sorry!  I must be very nice to her after dinner.”

Lady Aspenick was very “nice” to Jenny after dinner, and so were all of them.  She seemed to take new rank that evening ­to undergo a kind of informal but very real adoption into the inner circle of families which made the local society.  She was no longer a stranger entertaining them; she had become one of themselves.  This could not all be reward for ostracizing Octon.  Lady Aspenick’s conversation, in itself not remarkable for depth or originality, was a surface sign of another current of opinion bearing strongly on Jenny’s position.  But no doubt acquiescence in the ostracism was a condition precedent both to the adoption and to that remoter prospect which inspired it.

Jenny’s eyes were very clear.  After they had all gone, I returned to the drawing-room to bid her good night.  Chat had already scuttled off to bed ­dinner parties kept her up later than was to her liking.  Jenny was leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve been good ­and I’ve had my sugar-plums.”

“Yes, and they’ve got plenty more for you if you go on being good.”

“Oh, yes.”  Her voice sounded tired, and her face looked strained.

“Even some very big ones!”

Up to now she had shown no sign of resenting the pressure put upon her; she had been sorrowful, but had displayed no anger.  She did not even now challenge the justice of Fillingford’s decision; but she broke out into a rage against the control claimed over herself.

“They force me to things,” she said in a low voice, but in a tone full of feeling.  “They tell me I must do this or do that, or else I can’t be one of them, I can’t rank with them, I can’t, I suppose, marry Lord Fillingford!  Well, I yield where I must, but sometimes I get my own way all the same.  Let them look out for that!  Yes, I get my own way in the end, Austin.”

“No doubt ­not that I know what is your way in this particular matter.”

Her little outbreak of anger passed as quickly as it had come.  She shrugged her shoulders with a woeful smile.

“My own way!  So one talks.  What is one’s way?  The way one would choose?  No ­it’s generally the way one has to tread.  It’s in that sense that I shall get my own way.”

“You’ll try for it in the other sense, though, I fancy.”

“Yes, perhaps I shall ­and I shan’t try less because Lord Fillingford and the Aspenicks either scold or pet me.”

“Well, but it’s hardly reasonable to expect to have things both ways, is it?”

She came to me, laughing, and took hold of my hands:  “But if I choose to have them both ways, sir?” she asked.

“Then, of course,” said I, “the case is different.”

“I will have them both ways,” said Jenny.

“You can’t.”

“See if I don’t!” she cried in merry defiance.  “Only, mind you, not a word of it ­to the county!” She pressed my hands and let them go.  “Oh, I’m so tired!”

“Stop thinking ­do stop thinking ­and go to sleep.”

She nodded at me kindly and reassuringly as Loft came in to put out the lights.  I left her standing there in her rich frock, with her jewels gleaming, yet with her eyes again weary and mournful.  She had had a bad day of it, for all her triumph in the evening.  Trying to have it both ways was hard work.