"I'll wait for him right enough, but I wouldn't mind having a trifle on it that I keep on waiting till it's too late for him to catch his train."
Sam Evans grinned; he kept on grinning as he drove off, although the butler had done his best to keep him in his place. But the groom was right; the dog-cart waited outside the village inn till it was too late for Sydney Beaton to catch the last up train.
Autumn was come. The nights were drawing in. It was dusk. Sydney Beaton pursued his way through gathering shadows, through trees whose foliage had assumed the russet hues of autumn. There had been rain earlier in the day; a northerly breeze had blown it away, the same breeze was bringing the leaves down in showers about him as he walked. He went perhaps a good half-mile, taking a familiar short cut across his brother's property on to the neighbouring estate of Nuthurst. He came to a ring of trees which ran round a little knoll, on the top of which was what looked to be an old-fashioned summer-house. His footsteps must have been audible as they tramped through the dry leaves; that his approach had been heard was made plain by the fact that a feminine figure came out of the building and down the rising ground to meet him as he came. What sort of greeting he would have offered seemed doubtful; something in his bearing suggested that it would have been a less ardent one than that which he received. Moving quickly towards him, without any hesitation the lady placed her two hands upon his shoulders and kissed him again and again.
"Sydney, you are a wretch! Why didn't you let me know that you were coming?"
"I scarcely knew myself until I was in the train."
"You might have sent me a telegram before the train started."
"I'm only here for half an hour; I shall have to hurry off to catch the last train back to town."
Something in his words or manner seemed to strike her. She drew a little away from him in order to see him better.
"Sydney, what's wrong?"
He smiled, not gaily. To her keen eyes his bearing seemed to lack that touch of boyish carelessness with which she was familiar.