It was not a yell of anguish, and Lord Newhaven remained at the window leaning on his elbows and watching at his ease the little scene which was taking place below him.

On his bicycle on the smooth-shaven lawn was Dick, wheeling slowly in and out among the stone-edged flower-beds, an apricot in each broad palm, while he discoursed in a dispassionate manner to the two excited little boys who were making futile rushes for the apricots.  The governess and Rachel were looking on.  Rachel had arrived at Westhope the day before from Southminster.  “Take your time, my son,” said Dick, just eluding by a hair’s-breadth a charge through a geranium-bed on the part of the eldest boy.  “If you are such jolly little fools as to crack your little skulls on the sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself.  Miss Turner says you may have them, so you’ve only got to take them.  I can’t keep on offering them all day long.  My time”—­(Dick ran his bicycle up a terrace, and, as soon as the boys were up, glided down again)—­“my time is valuable.  You don’t want them?” A shrill disclaimer and a fresh onslaught.  “Miss Turner, they thank you very much, but they don’t care for apricots.”

Half a second more and Dick skilfully parted from his bicycle and was charged by his two admirers and severely pummelled as high as they could reach.  When they had been led away by Miss Turner, each biting an apricot and casting longing backward looks at their friend, Rachel and Dick wandered to the north side of the abbey and sat down there in the shade.

Lord Newhaven could still see them, could still note her amused face under her wide white hat.  He was doing his best for Dick, and Dick was certainly having his chance, and making the most of it according to his lights.

“But, all the same, I don’t think he has a chance,” said Lord Newhaven to himself.  “That woman, in spite of her frank manner and her self-possession, is afraid of men; not of being married for her money, but of man himself.  And whatever else he may not be, Dick is a man.  It’s the best chance she will ever get, so it is probable she won’t take it.”

Lord Newhaven sauntered back down the narrow black oak staircase to his own room on the ground-floor.  He sat down at his writing-table and took out of his pocket a letter which he had evidently read before.  He now read it slowly once more.

“Your last letter to me had been opened,” wrote his brother from India, “or else it had not been properly closed.  As you wrote on business, I wish you would be more careful.”

“I will,” said Lord Newhaven, and he wrote a short letter in his small, upright hand, closed the envelope, addressed and stamped it, and sauntered out through the low-arched door into the garden.

Dick was sitting alone on the high-carved stone edge of the round pool where the monks used to wash, and where gold-fish now lived cloistered lives.  A moment of depression seemed to have overtaken that cheerful personage.