“Honest man!” cried George.  “But here are your friends, and you had better stir yourself and make them welcome.”

Five very cool and leisurely beings were coming up the hill-path, for, having driven to above the village, they had had an easy walk of scarcely half a mile.  Lewis’s eye sought out a slight figure behind the others, a mere gleam of pink and white.  As she stepped out from the path to the heather his eye was quick to seize her exquisite grace.  Other women arrayed themselves in loose and floating raiment, ribbons and what not; but here was one who knew her daintiness, and made no effort to cloak it.  Trim, cool, and sweet, the coils of bright hair above the white frock catching the noon sun—­surely a lady to pray for and toil for, one made for no facile wooing or easy conquest.

Lewis advanced to Mr. Stocks as soon as he had welcomed his aunt, and shook hands cordially.  “We seem to have lost sight of each other during the last few days.  I never congratulated you enough, but you probably understood that my head was full of other things.  You fought splendidly, and I can’t say I regret the issue.  You will do much better than I ever could.”

Mr. Stocks smiled happily.  The wheel of his fortunes was bringing him very near the top.  All the way up he had had Alice for a companion; and that young woman, happy from a wholly different cause, had been wonderfully gracious.  He felt himself on Mr. Lewis Haystoun’s level at last, and the baffling sense of being on a different plane, which he had always experienced in his company, was gone, he hoped, for ever.  So he became frank and confidential, forgot the pomp of his talk and his inevitable principles, and assisted in laying lunch.

Lady Manorwater drove her nephew into a corner.

“Where have you been.  Lewis, all these days?  If you had been anybody else, I should have said you were sulking.  I must speak to you seriously.  Do you know that Alice has been breaking her heart for you?  I won’t have the poor child made miserable, and though I don’t in the least want you to marry her, yet; I cannot have you playing with her.”

Lewis had grown suddenly very red.

“I think you are mistaken,” he said stiffly.  “Miss Wishart does not care a straw for me.  If she is in love with anybody, it is with Stocks.”

“I am much older than you, my dear, and I should know better.  I may as well confess that I hoped it would be Mr. Stocks, but I can’t disbelieve my own eyes.  The child becomes wretched whenever she hears your name.”

“You are making me miserably unhappy, because I can’t believe a word of it.  I have made a howling fool of myself lately, and I can’t be blind to what she thinks of me.”

Lady Manorwater looked pathetic.  “Is the great Lewis ashamed of himself?”

“Not a bit.  I would do it again, for it is my nature to, as the hymn says.  I am cut all the wrong way, and my mind is my mind, you know.  But I can’t expect Miss Wishart to take that point of view.”