The echoes of the band which was enlivening the promenade we have just left penetrated to the pavilion where Rachel and her husband were sitting alone. A little path ran from the back of the pavilion straight up into the woods. At certain hours, when the fashionable world met to drink the waters, to listen to the band, or to talk at the Casino, the woodland path was almost deserted. At no time was it very crowded, as it was a short and rather steep short cut to a walk through the wood which could be reached by a more convenient access from the principal street in the town.

Rendel, although it had not occurred to him to look at a Visitors' List, and although he did not realise yet how many people he knew were at Schleppenheim, still had a strange, unpleasant feeling, horribly new to him, of shrinking from meeting any one he had ever seen before. He had seen the woodland path, and was wondering if he should go and explore it at this hour when presumably every one was listening to the band, of which the incessant strains heard in the distance were beginning to be maddening. As he looked up vaguely, the little door into the garden opened, and he saw the familiar figure of Wentworth appear. His heart stood still. Did Wentworth know? Was he coming out of compassion? And at the same moment that he thought it, further back somewhere in his mind he was conscious of the absurdity of Wentworth having become suddenly so important—Wentworth's opinion, his personality mattering, his representing one of the instruments of Fate. He stood, therefore, to Wentworth's surprise, absolutely still, waiting to see what his friend's attitude would be. But there was no mistake about that, about the unaffected heartiness and rejoicing with which Wentworth met him, in absolute unconsciousness of any possible cloud between them, any possible reason why Rendel should not be as glad to see him as he had been at any time since they had been at Oxford together.

"Frank!" he said, as he came forward, "what's all this about? Why are you hiding yourself here?" And he stopped in surprise at seeing as he spoke the words something in Rendel's whole bearing that made him feel as if he were speaking the truth in jest, as if the man before him really were hiding, really had something to conceal.

Then, after that first moment, Rendel realised that Wentworth knew nothing. That, at any rate, for the moment was to the good, and with an abounding sense of relief he held out his hand.

"Don't you like these quarters?" he said. "We think they are perfectly delightful."

"So do I," Wentworth said, "so do I. They are so quiet."

"My wife wants to be quiet," said Rendel, half indicating Rachel, who was lying back in a garden chair, some knitting in her hands.

"How are you, Mrs. Rendel?" said Wentworth, and he hastened forward to greet her.

She put out her hand with a smile and shook hands with him, apparently not surprised at seeing him, or particularly interested.

"You are certainly most delightfully cool here in the shade," he said. "It is awfully hot in that promenade."

"It must be," said Rachel.

"How long have you been here?" Wentworth went on, sitting down.

"How long is it?" said Rachel, with a slightly puzzled look, looking at Rendel. "Only a few days, isn't it?"

"Yes, not quite a week. My wife has not been well. We were recommended here that she might do the cure."

"I see," Wentworth said, somewhat relieved at finding himself on the way to an explanation. "Well, this is a splendid place, I believe, for the people that it cures," he added sapiently.

"No doubt," Rendel said.

There was another pause.

"Then that is why we have not seen you at the Casino," Wentworth said. "One can't avoid running up against people one knows at every turn here."

"Is that so?" said Rendel, a note of anxiety in his voice. "We have not run up against any one yet."

"Oh! dear me, yes," said Wentworth, unconscious that each of the names he might enumerate would represent to Rendel a possible inexorable judge. "Half London is here: Lady Chaloner, Pateley—all sorts of people."

"Pateley?" said Rendel, the blood rushing to his face at the association of ideas called up in his mind by that name.

"Of course," said Wentworth. "Pateley, flourishing like the bay-tree. They say he is making thousands, and he looks as if he were."

"Out of the Arbiter?" asked Rendel.

"The Arbiter, I suppose, or something else. But I have no doubt he would tell you if you asked him. He does not impress me as being one of the very reserved kind."

"I don't know," said Rendel. "I don't suppose Pateley ever says more than he means to say, with all his air of hearty communicativeness."

"Well, I daresay not," said Wentworth. "The man's very good company after all; and as long as none of our secrets are in his keeping, it doesn't matter particularly."

Rendel said nothing. He felt he could not meet Pateley face to face at this moment.

"What do you do, then, all day here," said Wentworth, "if you don't drink the waters, and don't go to the Casino, and don't play Bridge?"

"I don't know. I don't do very much," said Rendel, with an involuntary accent in the words that made Wentworth ponder over the undesirability of marrying a wife who is in mourning and depressed.

"You should go into the wood," said Wentworth, "as the Germans do. We found a lot of them the other day singing part-songs out of little books. There is a band of them here called the Society of the United Thrushes, composed of the most respectable and most middle-aged ladies of the district."

"That sounds charming," said Rendel.

"Look here," said Wentworth, "if you don't care to walk alone, do let's walk together. One can go up here and along the wood for miles. We'll have good long stretches as we used to at Oxford. What do you think, Mrs. Rendel? Don't you think it would be a good thing for him?"

"Very," said Rachel with a smile. "I think he ought to go and walk."

"That's capital," said Wentworth. "Let's do that to-morrow, shall we?"

"I should like it very much," said Rendel.

But the next day the weather broke, and was unsettled for three days. On the Tuesday morning, happily for the bazaar and the big tent in the grounds of the Casino, the sun shone out again, and everything was radiant as before. Wentworth turned up at the pavilion in the forenoon and persuaded Rendel to make a day of it. The two started off together through the wood, the scented air floating round them, and bringing to Rendel, as he strode along with a congenial companion, a sense of mental and physical relief as though the atmosphere of both kinds that he was breathing were as different from that which had weighed him down a fortnight ago as the scent of the aromatic pines was from the air of the London streets. Wentworth was full of talk, of a kind it must be confessed which left his hearer at the end without any very distinct impression of what it had been about, although it passed the time agreeably and genially. He had his usual detached air, which Rendel had always been accustomed to find a relief as opposed to his own strenuous attitude, of standing aloof as an amused spectator of human contingencies.

"I haven't seen you for ever so long," Wentworth was saying. "What became of you at the end of the season? You vanished somehow, didn't you?"

"We were in mourning, you know," Rendel replied.

"Ah, to be sure, yes, Sir William Gore died," said Wentworth, attuning his voice to what he considered a suitable key, on the assumption that Rendel would feel still more bound to be loyal to his father-in-law now than when, as he put it to himself, the "old humbug" was alive. "Poor Mrs. Rendel, she looks as if it had been a great blow to her."

"Yes," said Rendel, "it was; and she has been ill besides." And he told Wentworth briefly of what had happened to Rachel, and the condition she was in, and the reassuring hopes held out by the doctors that she would almost certainly recover her normal state.

"I am very glad to hear that," said Wentworth cheerily. "Then you must come to London and start life again, Rendel, now you are free. Sir William Gore was rather a responsibility, I daresay."

"Yes," said Rendel, "he was."

"Let me see," said Wentworth, "it was just about when he died, I suppose, that Stamfordham published that sensational agreement with Germany?"

"Yes," said Rendel, "it was the day before he died."

"Ah," said Wentworth, "the day before? Then of course you didn't realise the excitement it was. By Jove! of course you know I'm not 'in' all that sort of thing myself, but I must say I never saw such a fuss and fizz as it was. The way it was sprung on people too! It was an awfully bold thing to do, you know; but it turned up trumps after all, that's the point. Stamfordham isn't like any body else, and that's the fact."

"What's that place we are coming to through the trees?" said Rendel.

"Why, that's it," said Wentworth. "That's where we shall get luncheon. They always have something ready for people who drop in."

"It isn't crowded, is it?" said Rendel.

"My dear fellow," replied Wentworth, "there is never anybody. I have been there twice since I came; once there was a German doctor, and once there was nobody."

"All right," said Rendel.

"You are sure to get veal," Wentworth said. "In Germany, whatever else is wanting, you can always get a veal cutlet to slake your thirst with, after the longest and hottest walk."

"I shall be quite content," said Rendel.

They went on across the hollow, and up a slight ascent. They strolled idly round the woodland house, and saw, as they expected, in the agreeable little garden behind, a long table all ready for luncheon.

"This is capital," said Wentworth. "You see, as I told you, they always expect people," and a waiting maid appearing at that moment, Wentworth proceeded to order luncheon for himself and Rendel in the best German he could muster. Unfortunately, however, the proprietor of the establishment was engaged in his cellar on important business, and the dialect spoken by the red-handed and red-cheeked maiden who received them was not very intelligible. However, by dint of nodding of heads and pointing out items on the bill of fare, they came to an understanding, Wentworth taking for granted that something quite unintelligible that she had said about the table was an inquiry as to whether they would sit at it, which indeed it was. But it was further an inquiry as to whether they were of the party that was coming to sit at it, which he also quite cheerfully and unsuspectingly answered in the affirmative. He then pulled out his watch, and pointing to a given time at which he would return, he and Rendel went further away into the wood.