"Well, I don't know—upon my word, I don't," said Captain Francis Newcombe with a quizzical grin. "He certainly isn't strikingly handsome; and I've an idea he's anything but a ladies' man—though not altogether a bad sort in spite of that, you know."
"Oh!" said Polly Wickes, with a little pout that might have meant anything. "Well, who is he, then—and where did you meet him?"
"I met him at the club in London, and we chummed up on the way over. It's quite simple. He was off for a holiday with no choice as to where he went, whereas I wanted to come here—so we came down in his motor cruiser. As to who he is, he's just young Howard Locke, the son of Howard Locke, senior, the American financier."
"Oh!" said Polly Wickes again.
What a ravishing little pout! Where had the girl learned the trick? Was it a trick? Those eyes were wonderfully frank, steady, ingenuous—wonderfully deep and self-reliant. He wondered if he looked old in those eyes? Young Locke! Fool again! Go on, tempt the gods! Ask her if thirty-three fell within her own category of youth, or—
"Don't make a sound!" she cautioned suddenly. "Quick! Here!"
He found himself, obedient to the pressure on his arm, standing back again within the shadows of the tree-arched road.
"What is it, Polly?" he asked in surprise.
"Look!" she whispered, and pointed out across the lawn.
A figure was emerging from the trees some hundred yards away, and, in the open now, began to approach the house. Captain Francis Newcombe stared. It was a bare-headed, white-haired old man in a dressing gown that reached almost to his heels. The man walked quickly, but with a queer, bird-like movement of his head which he cocked from side to side at almost every step, darting furtive glances in all directions around him.