"I'm glad you have raised that point," said Sir Richard quickly. "She does it for the sake of the child, so that Cherry may have all the advantages of wealth. Chloe herself has nothing and Carstairs is a rich man; so it is an eminently proper arrangement, and in my opinion Chloe behaved like a sensible woman in agreeing to it."
He threw away his cigar, which had gone out as he talked.
"No—what I wonder at is that Chloe should deliberately choose to come back here where the whole story is known. It's not bravado, of that I'm certain, but it beats me altogether how she can do it, for as you know women can be uncommonly cruel sometimes, and these creatures here aren't by any means charitably disposed towards her."
"You allow Miss Wayne to visit her?"
"Yes—and I welcome her to my house on the rare occasions she honours me by entering it," said Sir Richard with evident sincerity; and Anstice felt oddly gratified by the other man's speech.
A clock striking seven brought him to his feet in genuine dismay.
"Seven o'clock! I'd no idea it was so late! Pray excuse me inflicting myself on you all this time."
"Must you go?" Sir Richard rose too, and stood regarding the tall, loosely built figure with something like admiration. "Well, you're a busy man, I know; and if you really must go I'll not detain you. But you'll come in again, won't you? Come to dinner—Iris shall send you a note—and drop in for a smoke any evening you're at liberty."
The invitation so heartily given was accepted with a pleasure to which Anstice had long been a stranger; and then he said good-bye to his kind host and left Greengates feeling that he had found two unexpectedly congenial friends in Iris Wayne and her father.
He had been deeply, genuinely interested in Sir Richard's story, that unhappy story in which Chloe Carstairs figured so tragically; yet as he made his way homewards between the blossoming hedgerows his mind dwelt upon another woman, a younger, happier woman than the pale mistress of Cherry Orchard. And the face which floated before his eyes in the starlit spring dusk was the laughing, grey-eyed face of Iris Wayne.