The morning breeze darted in and out of Ann’s bedroom like a child tentatively trying to inveigle a grown-up person into playing hide-and-seek. With every puff a big cluster of roses, which had climbed to the sill, swayed forward and peeped inside, sending a whiff of delicate perfume across to where Ann was kneeling, surrounded by trunks and suitcases, unpacking her belongings. Pleasant little sounds of life floated up from outdoors—the clucking of a hen, the stamping of the bay cob as Billy Brewster groomed him, whistling softly through his teeth while he brushed and curry-combed, the occasional honk of a motor-horn as a car sped by in the distance. Then came the beat of a horse’s hoofs, stopping abruptly outside the cottage gate.

Ann did not pause in her occupation of emptying a hatbox of its tissue-shrouded contents. Robin had ridden away almost immediately after breakfast, so she merely supposed that, having started early, he had returned early. But a minute later Maria was standing in the doorway of the room, her broad face red with the exertion of hurrying upstairs, her eyes blinking excitedly.

“‘Tis Mr. Coventry himself, miss,” she announced. “He didn’t inquire if any one was at home, but just followed me in and asked me to tell Master Robin he was here.”

Ann rose reluctantly from her knees, dusting her hands together.

“All right, Maria, I’ll go down and see him. Perhaps he can leave a message with me for Robin. I hope, though,” she added with a faint sense of irritation, “that he isn’t going to make a habit of dropping in here in the mornings.”

Only pausing to push back a stray lock of hair, she ran quickly downstairs and into the living-room.

“I’m so sorry”—she began speaking almost as she crossed the threshold—“but my brother is out.”

With a stifled ejaculation the man standing in the shadow of the tall, old-fashioned chimneypiece wheeled round, and Ann found herself looking straight into the grey eyes of the Englishman from Montricheux. For a moment there was a silence—the silence of utter mutual astonishment, while Ann was wretchedly conscious of the flush that mounted slowly to her very temples. The man was the first to recover himself.

“So,” he said, “you are Miss Lovell!”

Something in his tone stung Ann into composure.

“Yes,” she replied coolly. “You don’t sound altogether pleased at the discovery.”

“Pleased?” His eyes rested on her with a species of repressed annoyance. “It doesn’t make much difference whether we’re—either of us—pleased or not, does it?”

His meaning appeared perfectly plain to Ann. For some reason which she could not fathom he found her appearance on the scene the very reverse of pleasing.

“I don’t see that it matters in any case,” she replied frostily. “The fact that I happen to be your agent’s sister doesn’t compel you to see any more of me than you wish to.”

“True. And if I’d known you were here I wouldn’t have come blundering in this morning.”

“I arrived yesterday,” vouchsafed Ann. “Won’t you sit down?” she added with perfunctory politeness. She seated herself, and in obedience to her gesture he mechanically followed suit.

“Yes, you were expected to-day, weren’t you? I’d forgotten,” he said abstractedly.

No one particularly enjoys being assured that they have been forgotten, and Ann’s eyes sparkled with suppressed indignation.

“Can I give my brother any message for you?” she asked stiffly.

All at once he smiled—that sudden, singularly sweet smile of his which transformed the harsh lines of his face and which seemed to have so little in common with his habitual brusqueness.

“I’ve been behaving like a boor, haven’t I?” he admitted. “Forgive me. And can’t we be friends? After all, I’ve some sort of claim. I pulled you out of Lac LÉman—or rather, prevented your tumbling into it, you know.”

He spoke with a curious persuasive charm. There was something almost boyishly disarming about his manner. It was as though for a moment a prickly, ungracious husk had dropped away, revealing the real man within. He held out his hand, and as Ann laid hers within it she felt her spirits rising unaccountably.

“I hope you’ll like it here,” he pursued. He glanced round with a discontented expression. “Does the cottage furniture satisfy you? Is it what you like?”

“It’s perfectly charming,” she replied whole-heartedly. “I love old-fashioned things.”

“Well, if there’s anything you’d like altered or want sending down, you must let me know. There are stacks of stuff up at Heronsmere.”

“You’ve already sent down the one thing to complete my happiness,” she answered, smiling. “That jolly little pony.”

“Oh, Dick Turpin. Do you like him?”

“Is that his name? Yes, I like him immensely. Thank you so much for sending him.” She paused, then added rather shyly: “I always seem to be thanking you for something, don’t I? First for rescuing my bag at the Kursaal, then for rescuing me, and now for Dick Turpin!”

“You can’t do without a cob”—briefly. “Do you ride?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I thought of riding him sometimes. Does he ride all right?”

“Oh, he’s quiet enough. But if you want to hunt next winter, you must let me mount you.” His glance rested on her slim, boyish contours. “I’ve a little thoroughbred mare up at Heronsmere—Redwing, she’s called—who would carry you perfectly.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—you mustn’t—” she began with some embarrassment.

“Nonsense!” He interrupted her brusquely. “What are you going to do down here if you don’t ride and drive? Lovell will have his work. But you won’t.”

“I’m proposing to keep chickens,” announced Ann. “I’m not in the least an idle person. You lose the habit if you’ve earned your own living for several years,” she added, with a touch of amusement.

“Have you done that?”

She assented.

“Of course I have. You can’t live on air, you know, and as my father didn’t leave us much else, Robin and I both had to work.”

He regarded her with brooding eyes. She was so gay and cheery about it all that, against his will, his thoughts were driven back amongst old memories, recalling another woman he had known who had chosen to escape from poverty by a different road from the clean, straight one of hard work. She had funked the sharp corners of life, that other, in a way in which this girl with the clear, brown-gold eyes that met the World so squarely would never funk them.

Before he could formulate any answer there came the sound of the house-door opening and closing. He rose hastily from his chair.

“Ah! That must be your brother!” he exclaimed, a note of what sounded almost like relief in his voice. He seemed glad of the distraction, and shook hands cordially with Robin when he came in.

“I’m sorry I was out,” began the latter. But Coventry cut short his apologies.

“Don’t apologise,” he said. “It has given Miss Lovell and myself the opportunity of renewing our acquaintance.”

Robin looked from one to the other in surprise.

“Have you met before, then?” he asked.

Ann explained.

“At Montricheux,” she replied. “Mr. Coventry saved me from a watery grave on the night of the Venetian FÊte there.”

“From nothing more dangerous than a wetting, actually,” interpolated Coventry in his abrupt way.

“Well, even that’s something to be thankful for,” returned Robin, smiling. “Will you smoke?”

He offered his cigarette-case, and the two men lit up.

“I’ve just been over to see Farmer Sparkes,” he continued. “He’s put in a list as long as your arm of repairs he wants doing.”

Coventry laughed good-humouredly.

“I suppose they’ll all be sticking me for alterations and repairs now I’ve come back,” he said. “What’s the use of a landlord unless you can squeeze something out of him?”

“I’m afraid there is a bit of that attitude about most tenants,” admitted Robin. “I expect the new owner of the Priory will get let in for the same thing. One or two of the Priory cottages want doing up, it’s true.”

“Have you seen her yet, Robin?” inquired Ann quickly, with feminine curiosity.

“Mrs. Hilyard, do you mean? No, I didn’t come across her this morning.”

“Who did you say?” asked Coventry.

Something in the quality of his voice brought Ann’s eyes swiftly to his face. All the geniality had gone out of it. It was set and stern, and there was an odd watchfulness in the glance he levelled at Robin as he spoke.

“Mrs. Hilyard—the new owner of the Priory,” explained Robin. “She arrived yesterday.”

“Hilyard?” repeated Coventry. “Some one told me the name was Hilton. You don’t know what Hilyard she is, I suppose?”

“No, I don’t know anything about her. But Hilyard’s a fairly common name.”

“Yes, I suppose it’s fairly common,” agreed Coventry slowly.

As though to dismiss the topic, he returned to the matter of the repairs required on Sparkes’ farm, and for a few minutes the two men were engrossed in details connected with the management of the estate. But Ann noticed that Coventry seemed curiously abstracted. He allowed his cigarette to smoulder between his fingers till it went out beneath their pressure, and presently, bringing the discussion with Robin to a sudden close, he got up to go. He tendered his farewell somewhat abruptly, mounted his horse, which had been standing tethered to the gateway by its bridle, and rode away at a hand-gallop.

Ann made no comment at the time, as Robin seemed rather preoccupied with estate matters, but over dinner in the evening she broached the subject upon which she had been exercising her mind at intervals throughout the day.

“Robin, did you notice Mr. Coventry’s expression when you mentioned Mrs. Hilyard?”

Robin looked up doubtfully from one of Maria’s beautifully grilled cutlets.

“His expression? No, I don’t think I was looking at him particularly. He thought she was called Hilton, or something, didn’t he?”

Ann went off into a small gale of laughter.

“Does a man ever notice anything unless it’s right under his nose?” she demanded dramatically of the universe at large. “My dear,” she went on, “his face altered the instant you mentioned Mrs. Hilyard’s name.”

“Well, but why should it?” demanded Robin, still at sea.

“I think,” she pronounced oracularly, “that a Mrs. Hilyard must have played a rather important part in Mr. Coventry’s life at one time or another.”

“Well, it’s no business of ours if she did,” responded Robin unsympathetically.

“No. But it would be queer if the Mrs. Hilyard who’s bought the Priory happened to be the other Mrs. Hilyard—the one Mr. Coventry knew before.”

“We’ve no grounds for assuming that he ever knew a Mrs. Hilyard at all, and if he did—as I said before, it’s no business of ours.”

There never was a real woman yet who failed to be intrigued by the suggestion of a romance lying dormant in the past life of a man of her acquaintance, and Ann was far too essentially feminine to pretend that her interest was not piqued.

“No, of course it’s no business of ours,” she agreed. “But still, one may take an intelligent interest in one’s fellow beings, I suppose.”

“It depends upon circumstances,” replied Robin. “I’m here as Coventry’s agent, and my employer’s private affairs are no concern of mine.”

There was just a suspicion of the “elder brother” in his manner—only a suspicion, but it was quite sufficient to arouse all the latent contrariety of woman which Ann possessed.

“Well, Mrs. Hilyard isn’t your employer,” she retorted. “So I’ve a perfect right to feel interested in her.”

“But not in her relation to Mr. Coventry,” maintained Robin seriously.

The corners of Ann’s mouth curled up in a mutinous smile, and her eyes danced.

“My dear Robin, you can’t insulate a woman as you can an electric wire—at least, not if she has any pretensions to good looks.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” he admitted, smiling back unwillingly. “More’s the pity, sometimes!”

There, for the moment, the subject dropped, but the imp of mischief still flickered defiantly in the golden-brown eyes, and when, after dinner was over, Maria brought in the coffee, Ann threw out a tentative remark which instantly achieved its nefarious purpose of loosening the springs of Maria’s garrulity.

“They be telling up a tale in the village about the new lady as has taken the Priory,” began Maria conversationally.

Ann sugared her coffee with an air of detachment, and watched Robin fidgeting out of the tail of her eye.

“You shouldn’t listen to gossip, Maria,” she reprimanded primly.

“Well, miss, ‘tis true folks say you shouldn’t believe all you hear, and ‘tis early days to speak, seeing she’s scarcely into her house yet, as you may say.”

“You give me an uncomfortable feeling that she spent the night on the doorstep,” observed Ann.

“Oh, no, miss,” replied Maria, matter-of-factly. “She slept in her bed all right last night. But maybe, for all that, it’s true what folks are saying,” she added darkly. “I’d run out of sugar, so I just stepped round to the grocer this evening after tea, and he told me ‘twas all the tale in the village that this Mrs. Hilyard isn’t a widow at all, and some of them think she’s no better than she should be.”

An ejaculation of annoyance broke from Robin.

“The tittle-tattle in these twopenny-halfpenny villages is almost past believing!” he exclaimed angrily. “Here’s an absolute new-comer arrives in the district, and they’ve begun taking away the poor woman’s character already.”

“Well, sir, of course I’m only speaking what I hear,” replied Maria, who, with all her good points—and they were many—had the true West Country relish for any titbit of gossip, whether with or without foundation. “Let’s hope ‘tisn’t true. But they say her clothes do be good enough for the highest lady in the land. Mrs. Thorowgood—her that’s been helping up to the Priory all day—called in on her way home just to pass the time of day with me. It seems Mrs. Hilyard has arranged she shall wash for her, and she was taking a few of her things home with her for to wash to-morrow. And she told me her own self, did Mrs. Thorowgood, that the lace on them be so fine as spider’s web.”

Ann endeavoured to conceal her mirth and reply with becoming gravity.

“Maria, dear, if a disreputable character is considered inseparable from pretty undies in Silverquay, I’m afraid I shall get as bad a reputation as Mrs. Hilyard,” she suggested meekly.

“You, miss?” Maria’s loyalty rose in wrathful protest. “And who should have good things if ‘tisn’t you, I’d like to know? ‘Twouldn’t be fitting for any Miss Lovell of Lovell Court to have things that wasn’t of the very best. And as to telling up little old tales—there’ll be no tales told about you, nor Mr. Robin neither, so long as I’m in Silverquay. I’ll see to that!”

Thoroughly devoted, illogical, and belligerent, Maria picked up the coffee tray and stalked out of the room, leaving Ann and Robin convulsed with laughter.