In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia.
Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!"
"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after them."
"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?"
"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his—a 'fidus Achates'—who lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather melancholy tone.
"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"—Sir Louis Ford lowered his voice—"I gathered the amazing fact that Coryston—Coryston!—is going to take the chair at a meeting where Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month."
Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately form of Coryston's mother in the distance.
"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly.
A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese.