“Hallo, Musgrave! I thought Grace was here,” cried Suffield, turning. “Have a glass of grog after your ride, eh?”
“No thanks.”
“What? Did you say you wouldn’t? By the way, you haven’t off-saddled,” glimpsing through the open door the other’s horse still standing in front of the stoep.
“I’m not going to off-saddle,” said Roden. “I don’t think I can stay very long.”
Suffield hardly knew what to answer, so he fired off volleys of commonplaces, which, treading on each other’s heels, soon merged into the most drivelling of incoherences. Roden, watching him, felt moved to pity and contempt: pity for the man who could make so gratuitous an ass of himself, contempt for one whose “friendship” thus collapsed at the first knock, and that knock an outside one.
“If you don’t mind, Suffield, I rather want to have a word or two with Miss Ridsdale,” he said at last. “I think I saw her strolling in the direction of the willows.”
“Certainly, certainly; you’re sure to find her there,” assented Suffield effusively. “When you come back you’ll perhaps change your mind about not off-saddling.”
Roden did not hurry as he took his way along that well-known path. His gait to the superficial observer was that of a bored lounger, strolling to kill time; and as he caught the glimpse of a white dress beneath the leafy canopy in front, so far from quickening his pace, he deliberately halted, and affected to pick up and examine a leaf or a pebble which lay in the path. And as he did so he began softly to hum to himself, and the words which he found himself humming were:
“’Twas here we last parted, ’twas here we first met.”