I object to their being carried to
extremes. Frankly, I should describe your young friend as
idiotically rash," said Lawrence with a wintry smile. "I
couldn't prevent her doing it because I hadn't the remotest
notion she was going to do it. The Dane was practically mad with
rage. I could have cuffed her myself with pleasure. It was a
wild thing to do and not at all agreeable for me."

"But, my dear Lawrence, that is one way of looking at it!" Laura
protested, amused by his cool egoism, though she took it with the
necessary grain of salt. "Bitten by that horrible dog? My poor
Isabel! she loves dogs--I don't suppose she stopped to consider
her own feelings or yours."

"She ought to have had more sense."

"Hear, hear!" said Bernard. "Half the trouble in the world comes
from women shoving in where they're not wanted. It's a pleasure
to talk to you, Lawrence, after lying here to be slobbered over
by a pack of old women. I always exclude you, my dear," he
nodded to Laura, "but the parson twaddles on till he makes me
sick, and Val's not much better. What's a woman want with
courage? Teach her to buy decent clothes and put 'em on
properly, and she's learning something useful. I'll guarantee
Isabel only got in the way. But you, Lawrence," he measured his
cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might
have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, "I should have
liked to see you tackle the Dane. You're a big chap--deeper in
the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach. What's your
chest measurement?-- Yes, you look it. And nothing in your hand
but a stick? By Jove, it must have been worth watching! Hey,
Laura?"

"Bernard, you are embarrassing! You will make even Lawrence shy.
But, yes," Laura laid her hand on Hyde's arm: "I should have
liked to watch you fight the Dane."

How long was it since any one had spoken to Lawrence in that warm
tone of affection? Not since his father died. From time to time
Mrs. Cleve or other ladies had flattered his senses or his
vanity, but none of them had ever looked at him with Laura's kind
admiring eyes. Perhaps after all there was something to be said
for family life! Tragic wreck as Clowes was, he would have been
far more to be pitied but for his wife: their marriage, crippled
and sterilized, was yet--as Lawrence saw it--a beautiful
relation. Suppose he stood in that relation to Isabel? Sitting
at table in the cool panelled diningroo