and setting forth on his three-mile tramp across the marshes. Denis would neither cycle, motor, nor fly upon a Sunday. This was the more inconvenient because, if Bredon was out of the world, Dandelion Farm, the present home of the Smith aeroplane, might be said to be howling in the wilderness.
It was still early in September, and after a rainy night the sky was blue again, the air crystal-pure over the flat green land. The road had neither fence nor hedgerow, but on either side a dark blue ribbon of water lay brimming and crumpling in the sea wind. Other such dikes, intersecting, ruled out the square fields of Thanet, where red cattle, like wooden beasts out of a Noah's Ark, grazed on pastures coarsely green. There was no sign of autumn but in the sedge, withered putty-color, and rustling a dry, pleasant song. In spring the yellow iris fringed the waterways; later, forget-me-not, loosestrife, meadow-sweet; now only the tall mud-clotted stems of the willow-herb, and its pink stars seeding in silvery down. Denis walked on, content. He did not consciously think about his surroundings, but unconsciously he was happier here than among the hills and woods of Arden. Thanet was English, and he was English—well, he was Irish; but he had all the Englishman's conservatism and love for the ways of home, what foreigners call his insularity.
Straight ahead at the end of the track rose a delicately penciled group of trees, with a gray roof showing beside, and white dots of sheep on the gray-green of their pasture. This was Dandelion, videlicet Dent-de-lion. Till a few months since, the partners had rented a bungalow on the sands near Bredon; but there Denis had been so pestered with interviewers, autograph hunters, and less estimable gentry who came to pick his brains, that after some debate they had transferred themselves to this lodge in the wilderness. Part of the ground that went with the house was to be flooded, for the use of seaplanes; while there was ample space in addition for an aerodrome and for workshops, hangars, etc., which could be shut off behind a palisading, and defy curiosity.
These new erections were frankly ugly, but there was a certain dignity about the square gray Georgian farm-house and its outbuildings. Denis passed a barn, its thatched roof cushioned with mosses, then a haystack, exhaling its warm sweet scent, then the stone gate-posts of the entrance. The gate was open, and he paused to latch it; gates left to swing shake off their hinges. He walked round the curve of the drive, his mind agreeably occupied with thoughts of cold beef, came in sight of the pillared portico—thrice horrid sight! there was a car standing at the door!
It was not his partner's, for the letter was P, not LD; nor was the car itself much like the battered and beloved old racer which Wandesforde liked to use. This was a Rolls-Royce touring car of the present year's model. No chauffeur was in charge. After prowling round to satisfy the curiosity which any piece of machinery roused in his engineer's brain, Denis went into the house to make inquiries. The porch opened into a passage with rooms on either side. Denis was tiptoeing towards the kitchen, where he hoped to find his man, when the door on the left opened suddenly, revealing the visitor—Dorothea O'Connor.
"So here you are at last!" she said. "I am so glad! I've been stuck here ever since eleven!"
Denis did not echo her joy. "I thought you were at Rochehaut!"
"Me? No, wasn't it funny? I had to leave, in a hurry, the very day after you did. I came off down here first thing this morning. It's a glorious run through Kent—the car did travel!"
"Your chauffeur, I suppose, is in with my man?"