Peace with Honour

She looked at him again. Was it possible that the man was such an arrant coxcomb as to imagine that she was doing her best to lead up to a resumption of the old state of affairs between them? Could he be trying to warn her off, or were his infelicitous remarks due only to ill-temper? But why should he be ill-tempered? In any case, it was clear that Major North, V.C., was a very different person from the boy who had gone to India fifteen years before, and the change was not an improvement.