“Then tell me,” Alice said slowly, “was she, do you suppose, the girl that I saw down on the beach with Tony?” “Yes,” said Maradick, “she must have been.” The girl got up slowly from the seat and stood with her back to him, her slim white figure drawn to its full height; the sun played like fire about her dress and hair, but there was something very pathetic in the way that she let her arms with a slow hopeless gesture fall to her side, and stared, motionless, down the path. Then she turned round to him. “Thank you, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “that’s all I wanted to know. I am happier about it, and Lady Gale will be too. You’re quite right about taking Tony away. It would only mean a hopeless break with Sir Richard, and then his mother would be caught into it too, and that must be averted at all costs. Besides, if she is as nice as you say, perhaps, after all, it is the best thing that could happen. And, at any rate,” she went on after a little pause, “we are all most awfully grateful to you. I don’t know what we should have done otherwise.” Some one was coming down the path. They both, at the same moment, saw that it was Mrs. Lester. Alice turned. “I must go,” she said. “Thank you again for what you told me.” He watched her walk down the path, very straight and tall, with a grace and ease that were delightful to him. The two women stopped for a moment and spoke; then Alice passed out of sight and Mrs. Lester came towards him. Some clock in the distance struck six. CHAPTER XIV MARADICK IN A NEW RÔLE—HE AFTERWARDS SEES TONY’S FACE IN A MIRROR He didn’t precisely know what his feelings were; he was too hot, and the whole thing was too much of a surprise for him to think at all; the thing that he did most nearly resemble, if he had wanted similes, was some sharply contested citadel receiving a new attack on its crumbling walls before the last one was truly over. But that again was not a simile that served with any accuracy, because he was so glad, so tumultuously and intensely glad, to see her. He wanted to keep that moment, that instant when she was coming down the path towards him, quite distinct from all the other moments of his life in its beauty and colours, and so he focussed in his mind the deep green of the trees and their purple shadows on the path, the noise that two birds made, and the deep rustle as of some moving water that her dress sent to him as she came. He sat there, one hand on each knee, looking straight before him, motionless. Mrs. Lester had that morning done her utmost to persuade her husband to “play a game.” She was brimming over with sentiment, partly because of the weather, partly because Treliss always made her feel like that, partly because it was “in the air” in some vague way through Tony.