“Yesterday.  I am home for good now.  My time is up.”  Sybil Linforth looked quickly at his face and turned away.

“You are sorry?” she said gently.

“Yes.  I don’t feel old, you see.  I feel as if I had many years’ good work in me yet.  But there!  That’s the trouble with the mediocre men.  They are shelved before they are old.  I am one of them.”

He laughed as he spoke, and looked at his companion.

Sybil Linforth was now thirty-eight years old, but the fourteen years had not set upon her the marks of their passage as they had upon Dewes.  Indeed, she still retained a look of youth, and all the slenderness of her figure.

Dewes grumbled to her with a smile upon his face.

“I wonder how in the world you do it.  Here am I white-haired and creased like a dry pippin.  There are you—­” and he broke off.  “I suppose it’s the boy who keeps you young.  How is he?”

A look of anxiety troubled Mrs. Linforth’s face; into her eyes there came a glint of fear.  Colonel Dewes’ voice became gentle with concern.

“What’s the matter, Sybil?” he said.  “Is he ill?”

“No, he is quite well.”

“Then what is it?”

Sybil Linforth looked down for a moment at the gravel of the garden-path.  Then, without raising her eyes, she said in a low voice: 

“I am afraid.”

“Ah,” said Dewes, as he rubbed his chin, “I see.”

It was his usual remark when he came against anything which he did not understand.

“You must let me have him for a week or two sometimes, Sybil.  Boys will get into trouble, you know.  It is their nature to.  And sometimes a man may be of use in putting things straight.”

The hint of a smile glimmered about Sybil Linforth’s mouth, but she repressed it.  She would not for worlds have let her friend see it, lest he might be hurt.

“No,” she replied, “Dick is not in any trouble.  But—­” and she struggled for a moment with a feeling that she ought not to say what she greatly desired to say; that speech would be disloyal.  But the need to speak was too strong within her, her heart too heavily charged with fear.

“I will tell you,” she said, and, with a glance towards the open windows of the house, she led Colonel Dewes to a corner of the garden where, upon a grass mound, there was a garden seat.  From this seat one overlooked the garden hedge.  To the left, the little village of Poynings with its grey church and tall tapering spire, lay at the foot of the gap in the Downs where runs the Brighton road.  Behind them the Downs ran like a rampart to right and left, their steep green sides scarred here and there by landslips and showing the white chalk.  Far away the high trees of Chanctonbury Ring stood out against the sky.