"Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black Sheep, shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to rather indignant consideration of the confusion of the Beaminster mind and its muddled moralities. The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, towards the close of it, quite awful in its agitation. "Dam' hot," said Lord John. "Very," said Roddy. "Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon----" "Quite likely." "Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morning." "Yes--don't it? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty badly. Down at my little place they tell me it's dried up like anythin'----" "Reg'lar Turkish bath----" "Well, the church ought to be cool----" "You never know with these churches----" Roddy thought "He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't want me to marry Rachel, but he's afraid of his old mother." "Massiter's getting fat----" This was Lord John's contribution. "Yes--so's that novelist feller----" "Oh! Garden! Yes--ever read anything of his?" "Never a line. Never read novels." "Not bad--good tales, you know." "He's probably," Roddy thought, "had a row with the old lady about me----" Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him--"Wish it was he wanted me to marry Rachel and the Duchess didn't--Wish she didn't, by Gad." As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had he been gifted in psychology, that there was in Lord John's face the look of a man who had fought a battle with his dark angel and been, alas, defeated. III After luncheon Roddy said: "Miss Beaminster, come for a walk?" "A little way," she said, looking at him with her eyes in that straight direct way that she had. "She must know," said Roddy to himself, "that I'm going to do it now. They all know. It's awful!" Some of the others had gathered together under a great oak that shaded the central lawn, and now as he climbed the hill with his capture he felt that from beneath that tree many eyes watched them. They did not go very far. At the top of the hill, above the little wood and the gardens and the house, there was a grassy hollow, and under this grassy hollow a great field of wheat, a sheet of red-gold with sudden waves and ripples in it as though some hand were shaking it, ran down to the valley. "Let's stop here," Rachel said. "I was out all this morning with Nita Raseley and it's too hot for any exertion whatever." A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched corn. "What sort of a girl do you think she is--Nita Raseley, I mean?" asked Rachel. "Oh! I don't know--the ordinary kind of girl--why?" "She seems to want to know me. Says that she hasn't many friends. Is that true? I thought she had heaps----" "You never can tell with girls. You're all so uncertain about one another--devoted one moment and enemies the next." "Are we?" said Rachel slowly. "I don't think I'm like that--Oh! how hot it is!" She lay back against the grass with her arms behind her head.