“Oh!” said Marshmoreton, hope fading from his voice.

“Thank you, Miss Faraday,” said Lady Caroline.  “The twelve-fifteen.”

“The motor will be round at a quarter to twelve.”

“Thank you.  Oh, by the way, Miss Faraday, will you call to Reggie as you pass, and tell him I wish to speak to him.”

Maud had left Reggie by the time Alice Faraday reached him, and that ardent youth was sitting on a stone seat, smoking a cigarette and entertaining himself with meditations in which thoughts of Alice competed for precedence with graver reflections connected with the subject of the correct stance for his approach-shots.  Reggie’s was a troubled spirit these days.  He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron.  He was practically a soul in torment.

“Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you, Mr. Byng.”

Reggie leaped from his seat.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo!  There you are!  I mean to say, what?”

He was conscious, as was his custom in her presence, of a warm, prickly sensation in the small of the back.  Some kind of elephantiasis seemed to have attacked his hands and feet, swelling them to enormous proportions.  He wished profoundly that he could get rid of his habit of yelping with nervous laughter whenever he encountered the girl of his dreams.  It was calculated to give her a wrong impression of a chap—­make her think him a fearful chump and what not!

“Lady Caroline is leaving by the twelve-fifteen.”

“That’s good!  What I mean to say is—­oh, she is, is she?  I see what you mean.”  The absolute necessity of saying something at least moderately coherent gripped him.  He rallied his forces.  “You wouldn’t care to come for a stroll, after I’ve seen the mater, or a row on the lake, or any rot like that, would you?”

“Thank you very much, but I must go in and help Lord Marshmoreton with his book.”

“What a rotten—­I mean, what a dam’ shame!”

The pity of it tore at Reggie’s heart strings.  He burned with generous wrath against Lord Marshmoreton, that modern Simon Legree, who used his capitalistic power to make a slave of this girl and keep her toiling indoors when all the world was sunshine.

“Shall I go and ask him if you can’t put it off till after dinner?”

“Oh, no, thanks very much.  I’m sure Lord Marshmoreton wouldn’t dream of it.”

She passed on with a pleasant smile.  When he had recovered from the effect of this Reggie proceeded slowly to the upper level to meet his step-mother.

“Hullo, mater.  Pretty fit and so forth?  What did you want to see me about?”

“Well, Reggie, what is the news?”

“Eh?  What?  News?  Didn’t you get hold of a paper at breakfast?  Nothing much in it.  Tam Duggan beat Alec Fraser three up and two to play at Prestwick.  I didn’t notice anything else much.  There’s a new musical comedy at the Regal.  Opened last night, and seems to be just like mother makes.  The Morning Post gave it a topping notice.  I must trickle up to town and see it some time this week.”