but in the lightness of his heart he saw only pleasant things.  Arrived at Yarmouth, he jumped into a cab, and was driven along the dull, flat road which leads to Gorleston.  Odour of the brine made amends for miles of lodgings, for breaks laden with boisterous trippers, for tram cars and piano-organs.  Here at length was Sunrise Terrace, a little row of plain houses on the top of the cliff, with sea-horizon vast before it, and soft green meadow-land far as one could see behind.  Bidding his driver wait, Lashmar knocked at the door, and stood tremulous.  It was half-past twelve; Iris might or might not have returned from her morning walk; he prepared for a brief disappointment.  But worse awaited him.  Mrs. Woolstan, he learnt, would not be at home for the mid-day meal; she was with friends who had a house at Gorleston.

“Where is the house?” he asked, impatiently, stamping as if his feet were cold.

The woman pointed his way.

“Who are the people?  What is their name?”

He heard it, but it conveyed nothing to him.  After a moment’s reflection, he decided to go to the hotel, and there write a note.  Whilst he was having lunch, the reply came, a dry missive, saying that, if he would call at three o’clock, Mrs. Woolstan would have much pleasure in presenting him to her friends the Barkers, with whom she was spending the day.

Lashmar fumed, but obeyed the invitation.  In a garden on the edge of the cliff, he found half a dozen persons; an elderly man who looked like a retired tradesman, his wife, of suitable appearance, their son, their two daughters, and Iris Woolstan.  Loud and mirthful talk was going on; his arrival interrupted it only for a moment.

“So glad to see you!” was Mrs. Woolstan’s friendly, but not cordial, greeting.  “I didn’t know you ever came to the east coast.”

Introductions were carelessly made; he seated himself on a camp-stool by one of the young ladies, and dropped a few insignificant remarks.  No one paid much attention to him.

“Seventy-five runs!” exclaimed Mrs. Woolstan, addressing herself as though with keen interest to the son of the family, a high-coloured, large-limbed young man of about Lashmar’s age.  “That was splendid!  But you did better still against East Croydon, didn’t you?”

“Made my century, there,” answered Mr. Barker, jerking out a leg in self-satisfaction.

“How conceited you’re making him, Mrs. Woolstan!” cried one of his sisters, with a shrill laugh.  “It’s a rule in this house to put the stopper on Jim when he begins to talk about cricket.  If we didn’t, there’d be no living with him.”

“Are you a cricketer, Mr.—­Mr. Lasher?” asked materfamilias, eyeing the visitor curiously.

“It’s a long time since I played,” was the reply, uttered with scarcely veiled contempt.

Mrs. Woolstan talked on in the highest spirits, exhibiting her intimacy with the Barker household, and her sympathy with their concerns.  Lashmar waited for her to question him about Hollingford, to give him an opportunity of revealing his importance; but her thoughts seemed never to turn in that direction.  As soon as a movement in the company enabled him to rise, he stepped up to her, and said in a voice audible to those standing by: