Mr. Hazlewood remained silent for a while.  Then he burst out petulantly: 

“Richard, there’s something I must speak to you seriously about:  the lateness of your hours in the morning.  I have noticed it with great regret.  It is not considerate to the servants and it cannot be healthy for you.  Such indolence too must be enervating to your mind.”

Dick forbore to remind his father that he was usually out of the house before seven.

“Father,” he said, at once a very model of humility, “I will endeavour to reform.”

Mr. Hazlewood concealed his embarrassment at teatime under a show of over-work.  He had a great deal to do—­just a moment for a cup of tea—­no more.  There was to be a meeting of the County Council the next morning when a most important question of small holdings was to come up for discussion.  Mr. Hazlewood held the strongest views.  He was engaged in shaping them in the smallest possible number of words.  To be brief, to be vivid—­there was the whole art of public speaking.  Mr. Hazlewood chattered feverishly for five minutes; he had come in chattering, he went out chattering.

“That’s all right, Stella, you see,” said Dick cheerfully when they were left alone.  Stella nodded her head.  Mr. Hazlewood had not said one word in recognition of her engagement but she had made her little fight that morning.  She had yielded and she could not renew it.  She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten.  But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a few tags and phrases.

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t come!” she had repeated and repeated and all the while her blood was leaping in her body for joy that he had.  She had promised in the end to stand firm, to stand by his side and brave—­what, after all, but the clamour of a week?  So he put it and so she was eager to believe.

Mr. Hazelwood, busy though he made himself out to be, found time that evening to drive in his motor-car into Great Beeding, and when the London train pulled up at the station he was on the platform.  He looked anxiously at the passengers who descended until he saw Robert Pettifer.  He went up to him at once.

“What in the world are you doing here?” asked the lawyer.

“I came on purpose to catch you, Robert.  I want to speak to you in private.  My car is here.  If you will get into it with me we can drive slowly towards your house.”

Pettifer’s face changed, but he could not refuse.  Hazlewood was agitated and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace.  Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station he asked: 

“Now what’s the matter?”

“I have been thinking over what you said last night, Robert.  You had a vague feeling of doubt.  Well, I have the verbatim reports of the trial in Bombay here in this envelope and I want you to read them carefully through and give me your opinion.”  He held out the envelope as he spoke, but Pettifer thrust his hands into his pockets.