A fig for marrying!' All the same, as she returned to her schemes both for regenerating the estate and managing the Squire--schemes which were beginning to fascinate her, both by their difficulty and their scale--she found her thoughts oddly interfered with, first by recollections of the past--bitter, ineffaceable memories--and then by reflections on the recent course of her relations with the Squire.
He had greeted her that morning without a single reference to the incidents of the night before, had seemed in excellent spirits, and before going up to town had given her in twenty minutes, _a propos_ of some difficulty in her work, one of the most brilliant lectures on certain points of Homeric archaeology she had ever heard--and she was a connoisseur in lectures.
Intellectually, as a scholar, she both admired and looked upon him--with reverence, even with enthusiasm.

She was eager for his praise, distressed by his censure.

Practically and morally, patriotically, above all, she despised him, thought him 'a worm and no man'! There was the paradox of the situation and as full of tingling challenge and entertainment as paradoxes generally are.
At this point she became aware of a group on the high road far to her right.

A pony-cart--a girl driving it--a man in khaki beside her; with a second girl-figure and another khaki-clad warrior, walking near.
She presently thought she recognized Pamela's pony and Pamela herself.

Desmond, who was going off that very evening to his artillery camp, had told her that 'Pam' was driving Aubrey over to Chetworth, and that he, Desmond, was 'jolly well going to see to it that neither old Aubrey nor Beryl were bullied out of their lives by father,' if he could help it.