Father looked at daughter, and she met his eyes.  “Well?”

“It’s all happened so quickly, Daddy,” she said, answering all that was implicit in that “Well?” She went on, “I would have told you about him if he had seemed to matter.  But it was just a friendship.  It didn’t seem to matter in any serious way.  Of course we’d been good friends—­and talked about all sorts of things.  And then suddenly you see,”—­her tone was offhand and matter-of-fact—­“he has to go to France.”

She stared at her father with the expression of a hostess who talks about the weather.  And then the tears gathered and ran down her cheek.

She turned her face to the Serpentine and clenched her fist.

But she was now fairly weeping.  “I didn’t know he cared.  I didn’t know I cared.”

His next question took a little time in coming.

“And it’s love, little Norah?” he asked.

She was comfortably crying now, the defensive altogether abandoned.  “It’s love, Daddy....  Oh! love!....  He’s going tomorrow.”  For a minute or so neither spoke.  Scrope’s mind was entirely made up in the matter.  He approved altogether of his daughter.  But the traditions of parentage, his habit of restrained decision, made him act a judicial part.  “I’d like just to see this boy,” he said, and added:  “If it isn’t rather interfering....”

“Dear Daddy!” she said.  “Dear Daddy!” and touched his hand.  “He’ll be coming here....”

“If you could tell me a few things about him,” said Scrope.  “Is he an undergraduate?”

“You see,” began Eleanor and paused to marshal her facts.  “He graduated this year.  Then he’s been in training at Cambridge.  Properly he’d have a fellowship.  He took the Natural Science tripos, zoology chiefly.  He’s good at philosophy, but of course our Cambridge philosophy is so silly—­McTaggart blowing bubbles....  His father’s a doctor, Sir Hedley Riverton.”

As she spoke her eyes had been roving up the path and down.  “He’s coming,” she interrupted.  She hesitated.  “Would you mind if I went and spoke to him first, Daddy?”

“Of course go to him.  Go and warn him I’m here,” said Scrope.

Eleanor got up, and was immediately greeted with joyful gestures by an approaching figure in khaki.  The two young people quickened their paces as they drew nearer one another.  There was a rapid greeting; they stood close together and spoke eagerly.  Scrope could tell by their movements when he became the subject of their talk.  He saw the young man start and look over Eleanor’s shoulder, and he assumed an attitude of philosophical contemplation of the water, so as to give the young man the liberty of his profile.

He did not look up until they were quite close to him, and when he did he saw a pleasant, slightly freckled fair face a little agitated, and very honest blue eyes.  “I hope you don’t think, Sir, that it’s bad form of me to ask Eleanor to come up and see me as I’ve done.  I telegraphed to her on an impulse, and it’s been very kind of her to come up to me.”