Harcourt Lowther found his brother’s boat moored to a little quay in a shady corner of the river below the Star and Garter, and the splendid colouring of Miss Grunderson’s toilet made that young lady conspicuous as she ascended a little pathway sloping upwards to the terrace, attended by her cavalier. Harcourt shipped his oars, and proposed a stroll in the Petersham meadows. Maude looked at her watch; it was a quarter to five, and Mr. Hillary’s dinner-hour was half-past seven. There was plenty of time for a stroll across those verdant meadows, and Mrs. Tredethlyn, having the interval to dispose of somehow, had only to choose in wasting it in this way or in some other fashion. Harcourt had his wish therefore. He assisted the two ladies to disembark, gave his coat into the custody of one of the lounging watermen at the rustic landing-stage, and then strolled with his two companions into the meadows leading towards Petersham. There is little need to tell the English reader what Petersham is like. Almost everybody knows that rural cluster of modern villas and grand old red brick mansions nestling so comfortably under the shadow of Richmond Hill. Surely the next best thing to inhabiting Earl Russell’s house in Richmond Park, or that magic château of Monsieur Fould’s, hidden deep in the woody heart of grand old St. Germain’s, would be to own one of those Georgian mansions at Petersham, with cool fishponds and shady gardens, long ranges of narrow windows, and a marble-paved vestibule, with a ceiling by Thornhill, and old family portraits by polite Sir Joshua himself. It was the afternoon of afternoons for listless dawdling about such a place as Petersham, and Mr. Lowther and the two ladies were alike enthusiastic in their admiration of the Georgian mansions. “I wish Francis would buy a nice old house down here,” said Maude. “I am so tired of London; it is all the same thing over, and over, and over again; the same flock of sheep jumping through the same gap in the same hedge, and not one of them--no, not even the leader--knowing why they do it. I should be near papa here, and all my old friends. In town I seem to know everybody, and yet not to have a single friend.” There was a rustic bench in the lane through which they were walking as Maude said this. The two ladies sat down to rest for a few minutes, and Harcourt Lowther took out his cigar-case. “I shall leave you just long enough to smoke a cigarette,” he said, “and then I will take you back to the water-side by a still prettier road, if you like.” He went away at a leisurely pace, lighting his cigar as he went; but he walked a good deal faster when he was out of Maude Tredethlyn’s ken, and he was flushed with heat when he returned after a quarter of an hour’s absence. “Now, ladies,” he said, “if we are not to keep Mr. Hillary waiting for his dinner, it is high time for us to go back to the boat.”