He did not accompany Maud and Toby down to Fairharbour, for business kept him at the Stables.  “Bring him back with you!” he said to his wife at parting, and she smiled and promised.  Bunny was never difficult to persuade.

But when they reached the polo-ground he was in the midst of a crowd of visitors from the hotel, and it seemed at first as if he would have no time to spare for them.  He very speedily detached himself, however, at sight of them and came up with an eager greeting.

“So awfully glad you’ve come.  There are some people here you used to know, Maud, in the old days.  Friends of Charlie’s too.  The Melroses—­you remember them, don’t you?”

The name came upon Maud with a curious shock.  Yes, she remembered the Melroses.  They belonged to the long, long ago before her marriage—­to that strange epoch in her early girlhood when Charlie Burchester had filled her world.  How far away it seemed!  They had all been in the same set, they and the Cressadys who had been responsible for the scandal that had so wrung her proud heart.  Lady Cressady had been dead for years.  She wondered if Charlie had ever regretted her.  It had been but a passing fancy, and she suspected that he had forgotten her long since.  He had never really taken her seriously; of that she was convinced now.  Life had been merely a game with him in those days.  It was only recently that it had begun to be anything else.

She felt no keen desire to resume the long-forgotten acquaintance with the Melroses, but Bunny evidently expected it of her, had already told them about her, and she had no choice.

She followed him therefore, Toby very sedate and upright behind her.  Toby was looking wonderfully pretty that day.  She varied as a landscape varies on a windy day, but that afternoon she was at her best.  Her blue eyes looked forth upon the crowd with a hint of audacity, and her piquante little face was full of charm.

Bunny’s look dwelt upon her as he drew aside for his sister to pass him at the pavilion.  He pinched her elbow with a sudden smile.

“You don’t want to go and talk to those people.  Come with me and see the ponies!”

She responded with characteristic eagerness to the invitation.  “Shall I?  But won’t Maud mind?  Do you think I ought?”

“Of course you ought,” he rejoined with decision.  “Maud won’t care.  I’ll bring you back to her before the play begins.”

He drew her away through the crowd, and she went with him without further demur.  Bunny was tall and bore himself with distinction.  There was, moreover, something rather compelling about him just then, and Toby felt the attraction.  She suffered the hand that grasped her own.

“Look here!” he said abruptly, as they drew apart from the throng.  “I’ve got to see more of you somehow.  Have you been dodging me all this time?”

“I?” said Toby.

She met his eyes with a funny little chuckle.  There was spontaneous mischief in his own.