"You young rebel!" he cried. "You want a good smacking for your disobedience!"
He slipped from the saddle as he spoke and led his horse towards them. He laid his hand familiarly on Aylmer's shoulder.
"Hurt?" he asked.
"Not in the least," said Aylmer, and then looked, with a significant lift of the eyebrow, from Despard to the gray horse's rider.
Despard's face showed his own surprise.
"Don't you know each other yet?" he marvelled. "Miss Van Arlen—Captain Aylmer."
Uncertainty gripped Aylmer again. Landon had married a daughter of Jacob Van Arlen, the millionaire. A divorcée reverted to her maiden name, but surely not to her maiden title. But Despard had said Miss, most distinctly Miss.
With his usual straightforward instinct to find the nearest way to probe a mystery, he looked at the girl herself. He became aware that her eyes had been upon his face with intentness.
"Yes," she said quietly. "This," she patted the child's shoulder, "is my nephew."
He gave a little sigh of appreciation and, he scarcely knew why, of relief. It was not possible, of course, that this girl, whose whole poise and carriage spoke of resolution and unfettered self-command, could be the woman, broken in health and spirit, who had cowered before her husband's glance, so some of the baser journals had hinted, even when she was seeking and had received the law's protection from him.