‘Evidently they are great friends,’ commented Eldon.

Adela did not reply.  After gazing a little longer, she said—­

‘He will be home before I can get there.’

She screwed up the glasses and turned as if to take leave.  But Hubert prepared to walk by her side, and together they reached the lane.

‘Now I am going to run down the hill,’ Adela said, laughing.  ’I can’t ask you to join in such childishness, and I suppose you are not going this way, either?’

‘No, I am walking back to the Manor,’ the other replied soberly.  ’We had better say good-bye.  On Monday we shall leave Wanley, my mother and I.’

‘On Monday?’

The girl became graver.

‘But only to go to Agworth?’ she added.

‘I shall not remain at Agworth.  I am going to London.’

‘To—­to study?’

‘Something or other, I don’t quite know what.  Good-bye!’

‘Won’t you come to say good-bye to us—­to mother?’

‘Shall you be at home to-morrow afternoon, about four o’clock say?’

‘Oh, yes; the very time.’

‘Then I will come to say good-bye.’

’In that case we needn’t say it now, need we?  It is only good afternoon.’

She began to walk down the lane.

‘I thought you were going to run,’ cried Hubert.

She looked back, and her silver laugh made chorus with the joyous refrain of a yellow-hammer, piping behind the hedge.  Till the turn of the road she continued walking, then Hubert had a glimpse of white folds waving in the act of flight, and she was beyond his vision.

CHAPTER VIII

Adela reached the house door at the very moment that Mutimer’s trap drove up.  She had run nearly all the way down the hill, and her soberer pace during the last ten minutes had not quite reduced the flush in her cheeks.  Mutimer raised his hat with much aplomb before he had pulled up his horse, and his look stayed on her whilst Alfred Waltham was descending and taking leave.

‘I was lucky enough to overtake your brother in Agworth,’ he said.

‘Ah, you have deprived him of what he calls his constitutional,’ laughed Adela.

’Have I?  Well, it isn’t often I’m here over Saturday, so he can generally feel safe.’

The hat was again aired, and Richard drove away to the Wheatsheaf Inn, where he kept his horse at present.

Brother and sister went together into the parlour, where Mrs. Waltham immediately joined them, having descended from an upper room.

‘So Mr. Mutimer drove you home!’ she exclaimed, with the interest which provincial ladies, lacking scope for their energies, will display in very small incidents.

’Yes.  By the way, I’ve asked him to come and have dinner with us to-morrow.  He hadn’t any special reason for going to town, and was uncertain whether to do so or not, so I thought I might as well have him here.’