"I thought I should find some of you here," he said; "where are the others?" "Gone to the Kieve, most of them," answered Mrs. Torrington briskly. Her freshness contrasted cruelly with Mopsy's limp and exhausted condition. "At least I know your wife and de Cazalet were bent on going there. She had promised to show the waterfall. We were just debating whether we ought to wait tea for them." "I wouldn't, if I were you," said Leonard. "No doubt they'll take their time." He flung down his game-bag, took up his hat, whistled to his dogs, and went towards the door. "Won't you stop and have some tea--just to keep us in countenance?" asked Mrs. Torrington. "No, thanks. I'd rather have it later. I'll go and meet the others." "If he ever intended to look after her it was certainly time he should begin," said the widow, when the door was shut upon her host. "Please ring again, Mr. FitzJesse. How slow these farm people are! Do they suppose we have come here to stare at cups and saucers?" CHAPTER XI. "LOVE BORE SUCH BITTER AND SUCH DEADLY FRUIT." Leonard Tregonell went slowly up the steep narrow lane with his dogs at his heels. It was a year since he had been this way. Good as the cover round about the waterfall was said to be for woodcock, he had carefully avoided the spot this season, and his friends had been constrained to defer to his superior wisdom as a son of the soil. He had gone farther afield for his sport, and, as there had been no lack of birds, his guests had no reason for complaint. Yet Jack Vandeleur had said more than once, "I wonder you don't try the Kieve. We shot a lot of birds there last year." Now for the first time since that departed autumn he went up the hill to one of the happy hunting-grounds of his boyhood. The place where he had fished, and shot, and trapped birds, and hunted water-rats, and climbed and torn his clothes in the careless schoolboy days, when his conception of a perfectly blissful existence came as near as possible to the life of a North American Indian. He had always detested polite society and book-learning; but he had been shrewd enough and quick enough at learning the arts he loved:--gunnery--angling--veterinary surgery. He met a group of people near the top of the hill--all the party except Christabel and the Baron. One glance showed him that these two were missing from the cluster of men and women crowding through the gate that opened into the lane. "The waterfall is quite a shabby affair," said Miss St. Aubyn; "there has been so little rain lately, I felt ashamed to show Mr. Faddie such a poor little dribble." "We are all going back to tea," explained her mother. "I don't know what has become of Mrs. Tregonell and the Baron, but I suppose they are loitering about somewhere. Perhaps you'll tell them we have all gone on to the farm." "Yes, I'll send them after you. I told my wife I'd meet her at the Kieve, if I could."