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'Ah, I have not come to that. So that is the end of Hyacinth, is it?'

René could see that she was carefully storing away these criticisms of the book, to be used, along with the victorian bookplate, to impress some intellectual friend. Meanwhile, he had got her toned down in the problems of a James' novel. Having finished his eggs and bacon, he turned to his mail.

Had Hester received convincing evidence that René had deliberately led her into a high-brow discussion from strategical purposes she would have been as astonished as mortified. She regarded herself as well-endowed with 'low-cunning'; but she was accustomed to think of him as ingenuous as a child, and as easy to see through as plate-glass. If he was ever opaque, that was his learning blurring the glass a little in her view. It was this acceptance by Hester of the Victorian convention of the strong but stupid masculine in contrast to the weak but wily feminine, which made it the simplest thing in the world for René to deceive her if he wanted to, though it is true that so far he had never availed himself of this, except for bagatelles, for pulling her leg.