* * * * *

At last!  A pony-cart coming up from the lodge, with two figures in it—­Aubrey and Pamela.  So poor Pam had at last got hold of something in the nature of an animal!

Beryl gripped the balustrading which bordered one side of the path, and stood watching intently—­a slender creature, in a broad purple hat, shading her small, distinguished face.

Presently, as the visitors approached the house, she waved to them, and they to her.  They disappeared from view for a minute.  Then a man’s figure emerged alone from a garden door opening on the flagged path.

He came towards her with outstretched hands, looked round him smiling to see that no one was in sight, and then kissed her.  Beryl knew she ought to have resisted the kiss; she had meant to do it; but all the same she submitted.

’Your father met us at the door.  Arthur has carried Pamela off somewhere.  Very sporting of them, wasn’t it?  So I’ve got you alone!  How nice you look!  And what a jolly place this is!’

He first looked her up and down with admiring eyes, and then made a gesture towards the beautiful modern house, and the equally beautiful and modern gardens in which it stood, with their still unspoilt autumn flowers, their cunning devices in steps and fountains and pergolas.

‘How on earth do you keep it so trim?’ He put a hand through her arm, and drew her on towards the wood-walk which opened beyond the formal garden and the lawn.

‘With two or three old men, and two girls from the village,’ said Beryl.  ’Father doesn’t mind what he gives up so long as it isn’t the garden.’

‘It’s his pet vice!’ laughed Aubrey—­’his public-house, like my father’s Greek pots.  I say—­you’ve heard of the secretary?’

It seemed to Beryl that he was fencing with her—­delaying their real talk.  But she accepted his lead.

’Yes, Desmond seems to like her.  I don’t gather that Pamela cares very much about her.’

’Oh, Pamela takes time.  But what do you think the secretary did last night?’

‘What?’ They had paused under a group of limes clad in a glory of yellow leaf, and she was looking up in surprise at the unusual animation playing over the features of the man beside her.

’She refused to sign a codicil to my father’s will, disinheriting me, and came to tell me so this morning!  You should have heard her!  Very formal and ceremonious—­very much on her dignity!  But such a brick!’

Mannering’s deep-set eyes under his lined thinker’s brow shone with amusement.  Beryl, with the instinctive jealousy of a girl in love, was conscious of a sudden annoyance that Miss Bremerton should have been mixed up in Aubrey’s personal affairs.

‘What do you mean?’

Aubrey put an arm round her shoulder.  She knew she ought to shake it off, but the pressure of it was too welcome.  They strolled on.