He made up his mind to tackle her outright when they got home and insist upon knowing what was worrying her. He had taken refuge in patience, but she sometimes needed rousing by sharper methods.
There might have arrived a letter from Peter criticizing what Cyprian felt to be none of that gentleman's business. As an only brother, and older than Ferlie, it was possible that Peter's scruples had outweighed his discretion. Cyprian, having overcome his own, was not prepared for re-discussion of the situation with anybody. To have and to hold, whatever the future brought to either of them. He would plough the furrow now to the very end.
As he registered this resolve afresh, he heard voices ahead, but their owners were hidden behind a natural crescent of thick undergrowth which somebody had attempted, in the past, to train as a rude hedge. Above the tumble of scattered bushes appeared the ragged outline of a garden, flanked by two huge Gul Mohurs.
Cyprian recognized them as those which stood in Digby Maur's compound, reflecting with satisfaction that the latter had remained largely invisible since his return from leave.
The ruin of decaying vegetation on the dank path muffled the sound of his horse's hoofs and he had passed within a few yards of the foliage concealing the speakers when the identity of one was revealed to him.
"I told you yesterday that you make me pity you, in spite of myself," Ferlie was saying excitedly. "I am speaking cold sense when I repeat that it will be impossible for me to hide much longer from Cyprian that I am not spending my afternoons at the Club. I actually had to go there to-day to avoid questions before he went out into the district."
"Well, it's no use," Digby Maur's huskily uneven tones replied. "You're great on 'control' and all that, and the means you employ to get here do not concern me. You will continue to come for as long as I need you, because you can't help yourself; and I am not nearly finished with you yet."
Cyprian, on this statement, became entirely primitive man, and did not wait to consider the metamorphosis. He dismounted, crashed through the interlacing branches, and found himself standing between Ferlie and the individual who had made this astounding claim on her time.
The air was pregnant with the labouring emotions of a drama as old as the world.
Digby Maur recovered first from the intrusion, for, aware that he now had his back to the wall he was, also, reliant on the sharpness of his teeth. Sterne was the kind of man to sell his soul in avoiding a scandal should such a drastic price be required of him.