(IV)

When the last game of billiards had been played, and whisky had been drunk, and Archie had taken up his candle, Dick stood still, with his own in his hand.

“Aren’t you coming?” said Archie.

Dick paused.

“I think I’ll smoke one more cigarette on the terrace,” he said.  “It’s a heavenly night, and I want to get the taste of the train out of my mouth.”

“All right, then.  Lock up, will you, when you come in?  I’m off.”

It was, indeed, a heavenly night.  Behind him as he sat at the table where they had had coffee the great house shimmered pale in the summer twilight, broken here by a line or two of yellow light behind shuttered windows, here with the big oriel window of the hall, blazing with coats, fully illuminated. (He must remember, he thought, to put out the lights there as he went to bed.)

And about him was the great soft, sweet-smelling darkness, roofed in by the far-off sky alight with stars; and beneath him in the valley he could catch the glimmer of the big lake and the blotted masses of pine and cypress black against it.

It was here, then, under these circumstances, that Dick confessed to himself, frankly and openly for the first time, that he was in love with Jenny Launton.

He had known her for years, off and on, and had thought of her as a pretty girl and a pleasant companion.  He had skated with her, ridden with her, danced with her, and had only understood, with a sense of mild shock, at the time of her engagement to Frank six months before, that she was of an age to become a wife to someone.

That had been the beginning of a process which culminated to-night, as he now understood perfectly.  Its next step had been a vague wonder why Archie hadn’t fallen in love with her himself; and he had explained it by saying that Archie had too great a sense of his own importance to permit himself to marry a rector’s daughter with only a couple of hundred a year of her own. (And in this explanation I think he was quite correct.) Then he had begun to think of her himself a good deal—­dramatically, rather than realistically—­wondering what it would feel like to be engaged to her.  If a younger son could marry her, surely a first cousin could—­even of the Guiseleys.  So it had gone on, little by little.  He had danced with her here at Christmas—­just after the engagement—­and had stayed on a week longer than he had intended.  He had come up again at Easter, and again at Whitsuntide, though he always protested to his friends that there was nothing to do at Merefield in the summer.  And now here he was again, and the thing had happened.

At first, as he sat here, he tried to analyze his attitude to Frank.