She put on her garden hat at length, took a shawl, and meandered about the grounds for half-an-hour; in vain. Cyril was not to be found. Then she confided her anxiety to Pearce, and sent him forth to search. Pearce did not agree with her as to the necessity, but he did what he was told; and after an hour's walk, he returned, having seen nothing of Sir Cyril. Dinner-time drew near. Did Cyril mean to fail for dinner? That would indeed be a startlingly new departure. Sybella melted into tears at the prospect, then she grew pettishly angry, and then she cried again. It was impossible to settle to anything. She wandered from room to room, looking out of windows, wondering what could be done next. A click at the front door sounded, and Cyril came in suddenly. Sybella was passing through the hall, and she stopped short, with an exclamation, half relieved, half reproachful. Cyril stood facing her, white and resolute, yet shamefaced. He had never treated her in this fashion before, and he did not know what to make of himself any more than Sybella knew what to make of him; but all promptings to softer feeling were checked again and again by the remembrance of how she had abashed him before Jean. He was stiff as steel on that point, worked up to rigidity by hours of brooding. Still, a touch of shame was visible. "Cyril!! At last!!" she said, any number of notes of admiration in her voice. "Where have you been?" "Walking!" curtly. "Not all this time! And your boots! You did not change your boots!" "No, aunt." "Cyril, this is very wrong. This really is most, reprehensible. I could not have thought it of you." Unyielding silence answered the reproach, and Sybella's voice began to shake. "I could not have believed in such behaviour. It is too bad—too ungrateful! But of course, I understand what makes you so unlike yourself. I quite understand. It is all the fault of those Trevelyans! The effect of being thrown too much with Jean! I am sure if I had thought—But I have been too kind—too indulgent! One finds one's mistakes—I shall have to take measures—strict measures! Lady Lucas is right! The thing cannot go on." Be it remarked, Sybella had studiously resolved to say nothing of all this, to make no allusion to the Trevelyans; above all, to utter no hint respecting Lady Lucas' advice. She did not wish to warn her nephew, or to annoy him afresh. Sybella's resolutions were, however, apt to fail when the moment came for carrying them out. "It is all the fault of those Trevelyans," she went on in her usual style of aimless repetition. "I suppose they have been setting you against me. And Jean—Have you been there again?" "No!"