The hand slipped from Francis' shoulder. Francis, with a smile, held out his own. They stood there for a moment with clasped hands--a queer, detached moment, as it seemed to Francis, in a life which during the last few months had been full of vivid sensations. From outside came the lazy sounds of the drowsy summer morning--the distant humming of a mowing machine, the drone of a reaper in the field beyond, the twittering of birds in the trees, even the soft lapping of the stream against the stone steps. The man whose hand he was holding seemed to Francis to have become somehow transformed. It was as though he had dropped a mask and were showing a more human, a more kindly self. Francis wondered no longer at the halting gallop of the horses in the field. “You'll be good to Margaret?” Sir Timothy begged. “She's had a wretched time.” Francis smiled confidently. “I'm going to make up for it, sir,” he promised. “And this South American trip,” he continued, as they turned towards the French windows, “you'll call that off?” Sir Timothy hesitated. “I am not quite sure.” When they reached the garden, Lady Cynthia was alone. She scarcely glanced at Francis. Her eyes were anxiously fixed upon his companion. “Margaret has gone in to make the cocktails herself,” she explained. “We have both sworn off absinthe for the rest of our lives, and we know Hedges can't be trusted to make one without.” “I'll go and help her,” Francis declared. Lady Cynthia passed her arm through Sir Timothy's. “I want to know about South America,” she begged. “The sight of those trunks worries me.” Sir Timothy's casual reply was obviously a subterfuge. They crossed the lawn and the rustic bridge, almost in silence, passing underneath the pergola of roses to the sheltered garden at the further end. Then Lady Cynthia paused. “You are not going to South America,” she pleaded, “alone?” Sir Timothy took her hands. “My dear,” he said, “listen, please, to my confession. I am a fraud. I am not a purveyor of new sensations for a decadent troop of weary, fashionable people. I am a fraud sometimes even to myself. I have had good luck in material things. I have had bad luck in the precious, the sentimental side of life. It has made something of an artificial character of me, on the surface at any rate. I am really a simple, elderly man who loves fresh air, clean, honest things, games, and a healthy life. I have no ambitions except those connected with sport. I don't even want to climb to the topmost niches in the world of finance. I think you have looked at me through the wrong-coloured spectacles. You have had a whimsical fancy for a character which does not exist.” “What I have seen,” Lady Cynthia answered, “I have seen through no spectacles at all--with my own eyes. But what I have seen, even, does not count. There is something else.” “I am within a few weeks of my fiftieth birthday,” Sir Timothy reminded her, “and you, I believe, are twenty-nine.”