THE gardens of Glenavelin have an air of antiquity¹ beyond the dwelling², for there the modish³ fashions of another century have been followed with enthusiasm. There are clipped yews⁴ and long arched avenues, bowers⁵ and summer-houses of rustic⁶ make, and a terraced lawn fringed with a Georgian parapet. A former lord had kept peacocks innumerable, and something of the tradition still survived. Set in the heart of hilly moorlands, it was like a cameo gem⁷ in a tartan plaid, a piece of old Vauxhall or Ranelagh in an upland vale. Of an afternoon sleep reigned⁸ supreme⁹. The shapely immobile trees, the grey and crumbling¹⁰ stone, the lone¹¹ green walks vanishing into a bosky darkness were instinct with the quiet of ages. It needed but Lady Prue with her flounces and furbelows and Sir Pertinax with his cane¹² and buckled¹³ shoon to re-create the ancient world before good Queen Anne had gone to her rest.  
In one of the shadiest corners of a great lawn Lady Manorwater sat making tea. Bertha, with a broad hat shading her eyes, dozed¹⁴ over a magazine in a deck-chair. That morning she and Alice had broken the convention of the house and gone riding in the haughlands till lunch. Now she suffered the penalty and dozed, but her companion was very wide awake, being a tireless creature who knew not lethargy. Besides, there was sufficient in prospect¹⁵ to stir her curiosity. Lady Manorwater had announced some twenty times that day that her nephew Lewis would come to tea, and Alice, knowing the truth of the prophecy, was prepared to receive him.
 
The image of the forsaken¹⁶ angler remained clear in her memory, and she confessed to herself that he interested her. The girl had no connoisseur’s eye for character; her interest was the frank and unabashed interest in a somewhat mysterious figure who was credited by all his friends with great gifts and a surprising amiability¹⁷. After breakfast she had captured one of the spectacled people, whose name was Hoddam. He was a little shy man, one of the unassuming tribe of students by whom all the minor¹⁸ intellectual work of the world is done, and done well. It is a great class, living in the main in red-brick villas¹⁹ on the outskirts²⁰ of academic towns, marrying mild blue-stockings, working incessantly²¹, and finally attaining²² to the fame of mention in prefaces and foot-notes, and a short paragraph in the Times at the last.... Mr. Hoddam did not seek the company of one who was young, pretty, an heiress, and presumably flippant, but he was flattered when she plainly sought him.
 
“Mr. Lewis Haystoun is coming here this afternoon,” she had announced. “Do you know him?”
 
“I have read his book,” said her victim.
 
“Yes, but did you not know him at Oxford²³? You were there with him, were you not?”
 
“Yes, we were there together. I knew him by sight, of course, for he was a very well-known person. But, you see, we belonged to very different sets.”
 
“How do you mean?” asked the blunt Alice.
 
“Well, you see,” began Mr. Hoddam awkwardly—absolute honesty was one of his characteristics—“he was very well off, and he lived with a sporting set, and he was very exclusive.”
 
“But I thought he was clever—I thought he was rather brilliant?”
 
“Oh, he was! Indubitably! He got everything he wanted, but then he got them easily and had a lot of time for other things, whereas most of us had not a moment to spare. He got the best First of his year and the St. Chad’s Fellowship, but I think he cared far more about winning the ‘Varsity Grind. Men who knew him said he was an extremely good fellow, but he had scores of rich sporting friends, and nobody else ever got to know him. I have heard him speak often, and his manner gave one the impression that he was a tremendous swell²⁴, you know, and rather conceited²⁵. People used to think him a sort of universal genius who could do everything. I suppose he was quite the ablest man that had been there for years, but I should think he would succeed ultimately as the man of action and not as the scholar.”
 
“You give him a most unlovely character,” said the girl.
 
“I don’t mean to. I own to being entirely²⁶ fascinated by him. But he was never, I think, really popular. He was supposed to be intolerant of mediocrity; and also he used to offend quite honest, simple-minded people by treating their beliefs very cavalierly. I used to compare him with Raleigh or Henri IV.—the proud, confident man of action.”
 
Alice had pondered over Mr. Hoddam’s confessions²⁷ and was prepared to receive the visitor with coldness. The vigorous little democrat²⁸ in her hated arrogance²⁹. Before, if she had asked herself what type on earth she hated most, she would have decided³⁰ for the unscrupulous, proud man. And yet this Lewis must be lovable. That brown face had infinite attractiveness, and she trusted Lady Manorwater’s acuteness and goodness of heart.
 
Lord Manorwater had gone off on some matter of business and taken the younger Miss Afflint with him. As Alice looked round the little assembly on the lawn, she felt for the first time the insignificance³¹ of the men. The large Mr. Stocks was not at his best in such surroundings. He was the typical townsman, and bore with him wherever he went an atmosphere of urban dust and worry. He hungered for ostentation³², he could only talk well when he felt that he impressed his hearers; Bertha, who was not easily impressed, he shunned³³ like a plague. The man, reflected the censorious Alice, had no shades or half-tones in his character; he was all bald, strong, and crude. Now he was talking to his hostess with the grace of the wise man unbending.
 
“I shall be pleased indeed to meet your nephew,” he said. “I feel sure that we have many interests in common. Do you say he lives near?”
 
Lady Manorwater, ever garrulous³⁴ on family matters, readily enlightened him. “Etterick is his, and really all the land round here. We simply live on a patch in the middle of it. The shooting is splendid, and Lewie is a very keen sportsman. His mother was my husband’s sister, and died when he was born. He is wonderfully unspoiled to have had such a lonely boyhood.”
 
“How did the family get the land?” he asked. It was a matter which interested him, for democratic politician though he was, he looked always forward to the day when he should own a pleasant country property, and forget the troubles of life in the Nirvana of the respectable.
 
“Oh, they’ve had it for ages. They are a very old family, you know, and look down upon us as parvenus³⁵. They have been everything in their day—soldiers, statesmen, lawyers; and when we were decent merchants in Abbeykirk three centuries ago, they were busy making history. When you go to Etterick you must see the pictures. There is a fine one by Jameson of the Haystoun who fought with Montrose, and Raeburn painted most of the Haystouns of his time. They were a very handsome race, at least the men; the women were too florid and buxom³⁶ for my taste.”
 
“And this Lewis—is he the only one of the family?”
 
“The very last, and of course he does his best to make away with himself by risking his precious life in Hindu Kush or Tibet or somewhere.” Her ladyship was geographical............