Sir Timothy looked back at the table.

“Margaret,” he said, “will you look after Mr. Ledsam for a little time?  You will excuse us, Ledsam?  We shall not be gone long.”

They moved away together towards the shrubbery and the door in the wall behind.  Francis resumed his seat.

“Are you not also curious to penetrate the mysteries behind the wall, Mr. Ledsam?” Margaret asked.

“Not so curious but that I would much prefer to remain here,” he answered.

“With me?”

“With you.”

She knocked the ash from her cigarette.  She was looking directly at him, and he fancied that there was a gleam of curiosity in her beautiful eyes.  There was certainly a little more abandon about her attitude.  She was leaning back in a corner of her high-backed chair, and her gown, although it lacked the daring of Lady Cynthia’s, seemed to rest about her like a cloud of blue-grey smoke.

“What a curious meal!” she murmured.  “Can you solve a puzzle for me, Mr. Ledsam?”

“I would do anything for you that I could,” he answered.

“Tell me, then, why my father asked you here to-night?  I can understand his bringing you to the opera, that was just a whim of the moment, but an invitation down here savours of deliberation.  Studiously polite though you are to one another, one is conscious all the time of the hostility beneath the surface.”

“I think that so far as your father is concerned, it is part of his peculiar disposition,” Francis replied.  “You remember he once said that he was tired of entertaining his friends—­that there was more pleasure in having an enemy at the board.”

“Are you an enemy, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked curiously.

He rose a little abruptly to his feet, ignoring her question.  There were servants hovering in the background.

“Will you walk with me in the gardens?” he begged.  “Or may I take you upon the river?”

She rose to her feet.  For a moment she seemed to hesitate.

“The river, I think,” she decided.  “Will you wait for three minutes while I get a wrap.  You will find some punts moored to the landing-stage there in the stream.  I like the very largest and most comfortable.”

Francis strolled to the edge of the stream, and made his choice of punts.  Soon a servant appeared with his arms full of cushions, and a moment or two later, Margaret herself, wrapped in an ermine cloak.  She smiled a little deprecatingly as she picked her way across the lawn.

“Don’t laugh at me for being such a chilly mortal, please,” she enjoined.  “And don’t be afraid that I am going to propose a long expedition.  I want to go to a little backwater in the next stream.”

She settled herself in the stern and they glided down the narrow thoroughfare.  The rose bushes from the garden almost lapped the water as they passed.  Behind, the long low cottage, the deserted dinner-table, the smooth lawn with its beds of scarlet geraniums and drooping lilac shrubs in the background, seemed like a scene from fairyland, to attain a perfection of detail unreal, almost theatrical.