Ranny asked me how the sunk garden was coming on. I didn't like going so far from the gate, but Betty's earnest "find out" was ringing in my ears. I sent a searching look across the heath, and then Ranny and I left the others and went down to the rock-quadrangle that used to be so tidily affluent in stone-loving mosses, sedums and suchlike. The weeds were fast driving the more delicate things out of the neglected tangle. For the old gardener had been gone a year, now, and there was overmuch for a jobbing person to do in a day or two a week. I apologised for the poor unkempt place, thinking how different I might have made it, but for the hours I spent over books. And would Eric have liked me better if---- I craned my neck, uneasy at not being able to see the gate nor any part of the bypath. Only the higher reach of heath road. Ranny had not pretended to be listening. I don't think he so much as saw how changed the garden was. We talked about the new young man--"awful good sort," according to Ranny. But that testimony, too, he gave in an absent-minded, perfunctory way. "Can't we sit down?" he said, looking blindly at a garden seat still shining-wet. I said we'd better walk. I lead him back near enough the house to see if the others had waylaid Eric. No, just the same group under my mother's window--Hermione and Babs arguing hotly about something. The red-haired young man aiming at an imaginary golf-ball with the crook-handle of his heavy walking-stick, and swinging it violently over his shoulder, that Bettina might see the approved position of feet and body before, and after, a furious drive. Whether Bettina made a practice of asking for this information I cannot say. But every man who came our way, young or old, was seized with an uncontrollable desire to teach Bettina the difference between good form and bad form at the game of golf. Ranny had been walking with his head bent and no pretence at making conversation. When I stopped, he looked up suddenly and caught sight of the group. He wheeled about, and stood with his back to the house and his face averted from me as well. "Look here," he said, "why shouldn't we go and meet Annan?--warn him--eh?" My heart leapt at the suggestion. And yet.... "Why should you want to do that?" I said suspiciously. "Oh, well, I don't care where we go--only ..." His voice sounded so queer I felt frightened. "I don't think I'll go back to _them_ just yet," he managed to bring out. "Do you mind?" CHAPTER XIX ANOTHER GIRL We turned off through the shrubbery, and went out by the side gate along the bypath to the links. Ranny walked behind, absolutely silent, till he burst out: "May I smoke?" When he had lit a cigarette, I glanced back. I thought he looked a shade less miserable. I could see the four figures standing out against the house, and still no sign anywhere of Eric. I asked Ranny if he was to be one of the yachting party. "Lord, no!"