The next morning the whole house was in a bustle, and the atmosphere seemed less oppressive than on the previous night. Sir Matthew, though looking ill and harassed, brightened up when Evereld appeared ready dressed for the journey in a trim little navy blue coat and skirt, a light blue shirt and a dainty white sailor hat. She looked so fresh and innocent and happy that for the time he quite forgot his schemes in the pleasure of just looking at her. It was not until they were on the platform at Victoria, and he saw Bruce Wylie approaching, that he remembered how necessary it was that by the time Evereld returned to London she should be safely betrothed to her solicitor. The thought made him glance critically at his friend. As it happened Bruce Wylie never showed to more advantage than at such a time as the present. His well cut grey travelling suit and knickerbockers made him appear much younger than he really was, his fair hair and trim beard, his merry grey eyes, his easy, pleasant manner were all in his favour. “It will be right enough,” reflected Sir Matthew, “The girl will be properly in love with him long before the end of the tour.” He had no notion how differently people regard the same person when one looks from the standpoint of five-and-fifty and the other from the standpoint of nineteen. Evereld saw merely the lawyer who had brought her chocolates when she was a little girl, she knew that he was at least nine-and-forty, and that from her point of view was elderly; the thirty years between them made a huge chasm which it would never have occurred to her to bridge over in any way but that of friendship. Even the friendship could not be the same sort of thing as that close friendship, that perfect understanding which comes between two people of the same generation. It would have had in it something of the position of master and pupil, which might have been delightful enough with some men, but she had never felt any desire to learn from Bruce Wylie. She liked him merely because he passed the time, because he had a fund of good stories and an easy natural way of telling them. So when Sir Matthew complacently noticed the way in which her face lighted up as she greeted Bruce Wylie, he was wholly unable to guess that the reception meant about as much as a child’s joyful greeting of the appearance of the clown in a pantomime. “Now we shall have some fun,” reflected Evereld, gladly finding the new comer beside her in the railway carriage. “I need have no scruples,” reflected Sir Matthew. “She evidently likes him and encourages him.” Bruce Wylie was not so sure in his own heart how matters stood, for Evereld was almost too frank and open with him, it was perfectly impossible to flirt with her, she liked him in the most unabashed manner, just as she had done when she was a child of eleven. Her enjoyment of his talk was what it had been then, and he was quite without the power of kindling in her heart any deeper feeling.