“And if I were you I would be thankful for it,” she said, warmly.  “From our point of view, at any rate, there is nothing so becoming to a man as the fact that he is a worker.  Sport is an excellent thing, but I detest young men who do nothing else but shoot and hunt and loaf about.  It seems to me to destroy character where work creates it.  All the same, I hope you will find an opportunity to come to Enton and say good-bye to us.”

Brooks was suddenly conscious that it would be no pleasant thing to say good-bye to Lady Sybil.  He had never known any one like her, so perfectly frank and girlish, and yet with character enough underneath in her rare moments of seriousness.  More than ever he was struck with the wonderful likeness between mother and daughter.

“I will come at any time I am asked,” he answered, quietly, “but I am sorry that you are going.”

They had finished supper, and had drawn their chairs around the fire.  Arranmore was smoking a cigarette, and Brooks took one from his case.  The carriage was ordered in a quarter of an hour.  Brooks found that he and Sybil were a little apart from the others.

“Do you know, I am sorry too,” she declared.  “Of course it has been much quieter at Enton than most of the houses we go to, and we only came at first, I think, because many years ago my mother and Lord Arranmore were great friends, and she fancied that he was shutting himself up too much.  But I have enjoyed it very much indeed.”

He looked at her curiously.  He was trying to appreciate what a life of refined pleasure which she must live would really be like—­how satisfying—­whether its limitations ever asserted themselves.  Sybil was a more than ordinarily pretty girl, but her face was as smooth as a child’s.  The Joie de vivre seemed to be always in her eyes.  Yet there were times, as he knew, when she was capable of seriousness.

“I am glad,” he said, “Lord Arranmore will miss you.”

She laughed at him, her eyebrows raised, a challenge in her bright eyes.

“May I add that I also shall?” he whispered.

“You may,” she answered.  “In fact, I expected it.  I am not sure that I did not ask for it.  And that reminds me.  I want you to do me a favour, if you will.”

“Anything I can do for you,” he answered, “you know will give me pleasure.”

She laughed softly.

“It is wonderful how you have improved,” she murmured.  “I want you to go and see Lord Arranmore as often as you can.  We are both very fond of him really, mamma especially, and you know that he has a very strange disposition.  I am convinced that solitude is the very worst thing for him.  I saw him once after he had been alone for a month or two, and really you would not have known him.  He was as thin as a skeleton, strange in his manner, and he had that sort of red light in his eyes sometimes which always makes me think of mad people.  He ought not to be alone at all, but the usual sort of society only bores him.  You will do what you can, won’t you?”