Then he went away with the small dark man who had used the stop-watch, and who carried the Zeiss binoculars slung in their case.
During this business interview Patrine had felt Bawne panting and wriggling close beside her, like an excited, but well-mannered fox-terrier waiting to be whistled for. But Sherbrand, though he glanced at the boy smilingly, had turned aside to engage in conversation with Saxham, and the Chief Scout, whom Sherbrand saluted in orthodox Scout fashion, flushing red under the clear sunburn that darkened his fair skin.
"He's one of Us!" Bawne whispered to Patrine, his own young face alight with pleasure. "He was Scoutmaster of a troop in the North, he told me, and I know he must have been a splendid one. He's the kind of chap who'd be prepared for anything. Don't you think he looks like that?"
Patrine did not answer. She was feeling "cheap," as Lady Beauvayse would have expressed it. She had put the man out of her thoughts because she had taken it for granted that Fanshaw's instructor could not be a gentleman. Now, as she watched Sherbrand in conversation with the elder man, his manner of quiet, well-bred deference, mingled with a pleasant courtesy, showed her beyond all doubt that his place was above the salt.
He had looked towards her, when he had smiled at Bawne, and his glance had swept over her without recognition. She would have known him anywhere, while he——! She had forgotten her preposterously-coloured hair.
How sweet the breeze was, bringing from the west the smell of strawberry-fields and red and white clover. Yet she had not noticed it until now. Her mood had changed. She had put away the thing she most hated to remember. She felt almost like the Patrine of two days ago.
"Miss Saxham!"
It was von Herrnung's voice speaking behind her, and with a shock of loathing horror she remembered all. She turned to see his tall figure approaching. The first impression was that he was ill; the next, that he was furiously angry. His florid complexion had bleached to an ugly, greenish pallor, even the blue of his eyes had faded to a curious lilac hue. He carried in his gloved left hand, and with evident care, a flat strapped wallet of brown leather, fastened with two Bramah locks and a lock-strap. He said to Patrine in a jarring voice of resentment and impatience:
"I have been looking for you. Could one not leave you for a minute but you must go off by yourself? Sapperlot! Whom has one here? Where did you pick up the boy?"
Her heart swelled as Bawne looked up at her in astonishment, then transferred his stare to von Herrnung, puckering his brows in disapproval of the rude, strange man. She answered as calmly as was possible: