He noticed the sweet resigned expression on her face, the air of quiet sadness, and then, suddenly, their eyes met.
She turned away at once and spoke to Mrs. Garrett.
"No, I didn't play to-day," he heard her say. "I just walked round the—round the old places."
And Mrs. Garrett nodded understandingly at her pudding. She would have nodded just as understandingly if she had known that Ruth, having made a special pilgrimage to the hummock by the third tee, had fallen asleep in the sun. But then, Mrs. Garrett understood nothing. And Ruth herself was feeling a little puzzled.
"When was Mrs. Seaton's husband killed?" said Ralton to John that night just before he went to bed.
"The Somme, sir," answered the old man, shaking his head. "Pore young thing."
But Hugh Ralton only grunted noncommittally and went upstairs.
The next day he played his first round. He was plus one at St. Andrews, but, despite that high qualification, one of the curses of the lesser golfer had him in its clutches.
He was slicing abominably, and lunatic asylums are very largely kept going by golfers who fail to stop themselves slicing.
At the tenth he pulled himself together. Through set teeth he spoke words of contumely to his ball, and then he smote it. There was no doubt about the result: it was not a slice. The ball travelled at right angles to the line of the hole in the direction of square leg—to apply a cricketing metaphor—and it travelled fast. And as he watched it go, with somewhat the expression of a man who contemplates a bad oyster, his eyes suddenly narrowed. Why the devil couldn't women take their walks on the sea-shore or along the road, or something?