He dismounted, and kissed her with some of the brusqueness of a man whose eyes seem too shallow, and whose heart is too near his lips. She let the strangeness in him pass, and they walked on side by side, the horse following at their heels. John Gore looked at the grass road before him, Barbara at the sky. And for nearly half a furlong they walked on thus in silence. “John, you two have spoken.” He glanced at her sharply, as though wondering how she knew. “Yes.” “What did he say to you?” “Questions. He asked questions.” “About—” “His friends; about your mother.” “What did you tell him, John?” “I told him the truth.” “Yes; and then—” “What could I say to the man? Curse him, he wept!” She paused a moment, taking her lover’s arm, and holding him back a little as though about to speak. The impulse changed, however, and she walked on again with a light of infinite wisdom in her eyes. For a man’s nature is a proud and contrary thing. She felt what was passing in John Gore’s heart, and she was too tender and too prudent to drag it roughly into the light of day. XLVIII My lord took his first walk in the kitchen of Thorn leaning upon John Gore’s shoulder, the son’s arm about the father’s body. Any one who had seen the pair would have judged them to have been the best of friends, for the son steadied the father’s steps with the grave, patient air of one whose care was almost a devotion. And the father, who had the look of a man who had aged very rapidly, what with the white in his hair and the deep lines upon his face, seemed to lean upon the son with a sense of confidence and trust. He was wearing a new suit of plain black cloth, with a white scarf about his throat. Some of his little gestures and tricks of expression came to him as in the old days, save that they were less emphatic and less characteristic of the aggressive self. At the third turn Stephen Gore looked at the window that was lit by the March sunlight, and a sudden wistfulness swept into his eyes, as though he were touched by pathetic memories. He paused, leaning his weight upon his son, for he was feeble and easily out of breath after those weeks upon his back. “I should like to go into the open air, John, and sit in the sun.” John Gore looked at him doubtfully. “You are safer here,” he said. My lord gave a shake of the head. “Are you cautious for my sake, my son? John—John, you do not understand me yet.” There seemed a new atmosphere of sympathy enveloping them, for John Gore answered his father very gently. “It shall be as you wish.” “Then put your arm under my shoulders, John—so. What a strong fellow you are! I can just toddle like a dot of two.”