Ernie shook his head.
"He's never with her," he said. "I ca-a-n't call to mind as ever I've seen them out together, not the pair of them."
"I'd ha liked him to have been at the wedding," murmured Ruth a thought discontentedly.
"And he'd ha liked it too, I'll lay," Ernie answered. "Only she'd never have let him."
The cart stopped; and the two passengers descended at the old Star opposite the Manor-house, which bore the plate of Mr. William Trupp, the famous surgeon.
On the Manor-house steps a tall somewhat cadaverous man was standing. He was so simply dressed as almost to be shabby; and his straw hat, tilted on the back of his head, disclosed a singularly fine forehead. There was something arresting about the man and his attitude: a delicious mixture of mischievous alertness and philosophical detachment. He might have been a mediæval scholar waiting at the door of his master; or a penitent seeking absolution; or, not least, a youth about to perpetrate a run-away knock.
Ernie across the road watched him with eyes in which affection and amusement mingled. Then the door opened, and the scholar-penitent-youth was being greeted with glee by Bess Trupp.
Ernie turned to his wife.
"My old Colonel," he said confidentially. "What I was in India with. Best Colonel the Hammer-men ever had—and that's saying something."
"Colonel Lewknor, aren't it?" asked Ruth.