The old man moved sharply in his chair.

“There’s no hurry, Richard.  You must find out how it will affect your career.  You have been so long at Little Beeding where we hear very little from the outer world.  You must consult your Colonel.”

Dick Hazlewood would not listen to the argument.

“My marriage is my affair, sir, not my Colonel’s.  I cannot take advice, for we both of us know what it would be.  And we both of us value it at its proper price, don’t we?”

Mr. Hazlewood could not reply.  How often had he inveighed against the opinions of the sleek worldly people who would add up advantages in a column and leave out of their consideration the merits of the higher life.

“It would not be fair to Stella were we to ask her to wait,” Dick resumed.  “Any delay—­think what will be made of it!  A month or six weeks from now, that gives us time enough.”

The old man rose abruptly from his chair with a vague word that he would think of it and went into the house.  He saw again the lovers as he had seen them this afternoon walking side by side slowly towards Stella Ballantyne’s cottage; and the picture even in the retrospect was intolerable.  The marriage must not take place—­yet it was so near.  A month or six weeks!  Mr. Hazlewood took up his pen and wrote the letter to Henry Thresk at last, as Robert Pettifer had always been sure that he would do.  It was the simplest kind of letter and took but a minute in the writing.  It mentioned only his miniatures and invited Henry Thresk to Little Beeding to see them, as more than one stranger had been asked before.  The answers which Thresk had given to the questions in Notes and Queries were pleaded as an introduction and Thresk was invited to choose his own day and remain at Little Beeding for the night.  The reply came by return of post.  Thresk would come to Little Beeding on the Friday afternoon of the next week.  He was in town, for Parliament was sitting late that year.  He would reach Little Beeding soon after five so that he might have an opportunity of seeing the miniatures by daylight.  Mr. Hazlewood hurried over with the news to Robert Pettifer.  His spirits had risen at a bound.  Already he saw the neighbourhood freed from the disturbing presence of Stella Ballantyne and himself cheerfully resuming his multifarious occupations.

Robert Pettifer, however, spoke in quite another strain.

“I am not so sure as you, Hazlewood.  The points which trouble me are very possibly capable of quite simple explanations.  I hope for my part that they will be so explained.”

“You hope it?” cried Mr. Hazlewood.

“Yes.  I want Dick to marry,” said Robert Pettifer.

Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, to be discouraged.  He drove back to his house counting the days which must pass before Thresk’s arrival and wondering how he should manage to conceal his elation from the keen eyes of his son.  But he found that there was no need for him to trouble himself on that point, for this very morning at luncheon Dick said to him: