“Yes,” Dewes admitted.  “Yes, he would have told you.  I was wrong.”

“You see,” Mrs. Linforth continued, as though Dewes had not interrupted, “it is not natural for a boy at his age to want to be alone, is it?  I don’t think it is good either.  It is not natural for a boy of his age to be thoughtful.  I am not sure that that is good.  I am, to tell you the truth, very troubled.”

Dewes looked at her sharply.  Something, not so much in her words as in the careful, slow manner of her speech, warned him that she was not telling him all of the trouble which oppressed her.  Her fears were more definite than she had given him as yet reason to understand.  There was not enough in what she had said to account for the tense clasp of her hands, and the glint of terror in her eyes.

“Anyhow, he’s going to the big school next term,” he said; “that is, if you haven’t changed your mind since you last wrote to me, and I hope you haven’t changed your mind.  All that he wants really,” the Colonel added with unconscious cruelty, “is companions of his own age.  He passed in well, didn’t he?”

Sybil Linforth’s face lost for the moment all its apprehension.  A smile of pride made her face very tender, and as she turned to Dewes he thought to himself that really her eyes were beautiful.

“Yes, he passed in very high,” she said.

“Eton, isn’t it?” said Dewes.  “Whose house?”

She mentioned the name and added:  “His father was there before him.”  Then she rose from her seat.  “Would you like to see Dick?  I will show you him.  Come quietly.”

She led the way across the lawn towards an open window.  It was a day of sunshine; the garden was bright with flowers, and about the windows rose-trees climbed the house-walls.  It was a house of red brick, darkened by age, and with a roof of tiles.  To Dewes’ eyes, nestling as it did beneath the great grass Downs, it had a most homelike look of comfort.  Sybil turned with a finger on her lips.

“Keep this side of the window,” she whispered, “or your shadow will fall across the floor.”

Standing aside as she bade him, he looked into the room.  He saw a boy seated at a table with his head between his hands, immersed in a book which lay before him.  He was seated with his side towards the window and his hands concealed his face.  But in a moment he removed one hand and turned the page.  Colonel Dewes could now see the profile of his face.  A firm chin, a beauty of outline not very common, a certain delicacy of feature and colour gave to him a distinction of which Sybil Linforth might well be proud.

“He’ll be a dangerous fellow among the girls in a few years’ time,” said Dewes, turning to the mother.  But Sybil did not hear the words.  She was standing with her head thrust forward.  Her face was white, her whole aspect one of dismay.  Dewes could not understand the change in her.  A moment ago she had been laughing playfully as she led him towards the window.  Now it seemed as though a sudden disaster had turned her to stone.  Yet there was nothing visible to suggest disaster.  Dewes looked from Sybil to the boy and back again.  Then he noticed that her eyes were riveted, not on Dick’s face, but on the book which he was reading.