"You have had a wild life," she murmured, looking at him with some curiosity and a little awe.
"Wild enough; and I sometimes wonder whether the wildness is all out yet. Who says habit is second nature? There is a great deal of truth in it. They may put me into English dress and place a riding-whip in my hand in exchange for a pick or a revolver, but if anything I really wanted was to come into my life and there was any obstacle—" He broke off and looked hardly through the hedge, seeing something that was not there. His hands clenched themselves, and his face becoming set made him look more than his forty years.
"'COME,' HE SAID, 'I WISH TO SPEAK TO YOU. I CAN'T TALK IN THIS CROWD OF FOOLS.'"
She watched him with a new interest.
"Well?"
"I think it would go hard with the obstacle."
Daphne was about to continue her investigation when she caught sight of a straw hat over the hedge which bordered the meadow from the road.
"There's Jack!" she cried. "I know there is only one straw hat so dilapidated in the world!"
He looked at her narrowly.