"Shiela is practising and wants you to come over when you can and see us knock the ball about. It's a rotten field, but you can't help that down here." And clapping his spurless heels to his pony he saluted and wheeled away through the hammock. On the terrace Mrs. Cardross took his hands in her tremulous and pudgy fingers. "Are you sure you are perfectly well, Garry? Don't you think it safer to begin at once with a mild dose of quinine and follow it every three hours with a--" "Amy, dear!" murmured her husband, "I am not dreaming of interfering, but I, personally, never saw a finer specimen of physical health than this boy you are preparing to--be good to--" "Neville, you know absolutely nothing sometimes," observed his wife serenely. Then looking up at the tall young man bending over her chair: "You won't need as much as you required when you rode into the swamps every day, but you don't mind my prescribing for you now and then, do you, Garry?" "I was going to ask you to do it," he said, looking at Cardross unblushingly. And at such perfidy the older man turned away with an unfeigned groan just as Cecile, tennis-bat in hand, came out from the hall, saw him, dropped the bat, and walked straight into his arms. "Cecile," observed her mother mildly. "But I wish to hug him, mother, and he doesn't mind." Her mother laughed; Hamil, a trifle red, received a straightforward salute square on the mouth. "That," she said with calm conviction, "is the most proper and fitting thing you and I have ever done. Mother, you know it is." And passing her arm through Hamil's: "Last night," she said under her breath, "I went into Shiela's room to say good-night, and--and we both began to cry a little. It was as though I were giving up my controlling ownership in a dear and familiar possession; we did not speak of you--I don't remember that we spoke at all from the time I entered her room to the time I left--which was fearfully late. But I knew that I was giving up some vague proprietary right in her--that, to-day, that right would pass to another.... And, if I kissed you, Garry, it was in recognition of the passing of that right to you--and happy acquiescence in it, dear--believe me! happy, confident renunciation and gratitude for what must be." They had walked together to the southern end of the terrace; below stretched the splendid forest vista set with pool and fountain; under the parapet, in the new garden, red and white roses bloomed, and on the surface of spray-dimmed basins the jagged crimson reflections of goldfish dappled every unquiet pool. "Where is the new polo field?" he asked. She pointed out an unfamiliar path curving west from the tennis-courts, nodded, smiled, returning the pressure of his hand, and stood watching him from the parapet until he vanished in the shadow of the trees.