t in fact, as against the present foe, still unproved. Had
the prestige been brought to bear on Chat--so that she was wholly his?
Was it being brandished before my eyes, to gain me also--for what I was
worth?

After all, it was flattering of him to think that I mattered. I mattered
so very little. If he were minded to impress, if he were ready to fight,
his display and his battle must be against another foe--or--if the
evidence of that talk at the Flower Show went for anything--against
several. If an attack on Breysgate Priory were really in his mind, he
would find no ally--outside its walls.

CHAPTER V

RAPIER AND CLUB

Any account of Jenny Driver's doings is in danger of seeming to progress
by jumps and jerks, and thereby of contradicting the truth about its
subject. Cartmell, her principal man of business, scoffed at the idea
that Jenny was impulsive at all; after six months' experience of her he
said that he had never met a cooler, saner, more cautious judgment. That
this was true of her in business matters I have no reason to doubt, but
(I have noted this distinction already) if the remark is to be extended
to her personal affairs it needs qualification--yet without admitting of
contradiction. There she was undoubtedly impetuous and impulsive on
occasion; a certain course would appeal to her fancy, and she made for
it headlong, regardless, or seeming regardless, of its risks. But even
here, though the impulses prevailed on her suddenly in the end, they
were long in coming to a head, long in achieving mastery, and preceded
by protracted periods either of inaction or of action so wary and
tentative as not to commit her in any serious degree. She would advance
toward the object, then retreat from it, then stand still and look at
it, then walk round and regard it from another point of view. Next she
was apt to turn her back on it and become, for a time, engrossingly
interested in something else; it seemed essential to her ease of mind
that there should be an alternative possible and a line of retreat open.
All this circumspection and deliberation--or, if you like, this dawdling
and shilly-shallying (for opinions of Jenny have differed very widely on
this and on other matters)--had to happen before the rapid and imperious
impulse came to set a limit to them; even then it is doubtful whether
the impulse left her quite unmindful of the line of retreat.

These characteristics of hers were exhibited in her trea