“You don’t look forward to seeing the Daltons to-morrow,” she remarked.

“That’s so,” Festing admitted.  “I didn’t quite know what I’d undertaken when I gave my promise.  The thing looks worse in England.  In fact, it looks very nearly impossible just now.”

“But you are going?”

Festing spread out his hands.  “Certainly.  What can I do?  Charnock hustled me into it; he has a way of getting somebody else to do the things he shirks.  But I gave him my word.”

“And that’s binding!” remarked Muriel, who was half amused by his indignation.  She thought Charnock deserved it, but Festing could be trusted.

“I wish I could ask your advice,” he resumed.  “You could tell me what to say; but as I don’t know if Charnock would approve, it mightn’t be the proper thing.”

Muriel was keenly curious to learn the truth about her friend’s love affair, but she resisted the temptation.  Because she liked Festing, she would not persuade him to do something for which he might afterwards reproach himself.

“No,” she said, “perhaps you oughtn’t to tell me.  But I don’t think you need be nervous.  If you have the right feeling, you will take the proper line.”

Then they went into the house where the curate was talking to Gardiner.

CHAPTER VI

FESTING KEEPS HIS WORD

Next afternoon Festing leaned his borrowed bicycle against the gate at Knott Scar and walked up the drive.  He had grave misgivings, but it was too late to indulge them, and he braced himself and looked about with keen curiosity.  The drive curved and a bank of shrubs on one side obstructed his view, but the Scar rose in front, with patches of heather glowing a rich crimson among the gray rocks.  Beneath these, a dark beech wood rolled down the hill.  On the other side there was a lawn that looked like green velvet.  His trained eye could detect no unevenness; the smooth surface might have been laid with a spirit level.  Festing had seen no grass like this in Canada and wondered how much labor it cost.

Then he came to the end of the shrubs and saw a small, creeper-covered house, with a low wall, pierced where shallow steps went up, along the terrace.  The creeper was in full leaf and dark, but roses bloomed about the windows and bright-red geraniums in urns grew upon the wall.  He heard bees humming and a faint wind in the beech tops, but the shadows scarcely moved upon the grass, and a strange, drowsy quietness brooded over the place.  Indeed, the calm was daunting; he felt he belonged to another world and was intruding there, but went resolutely up the shallow steps.