He was not like his sister in appearance.  He favoured the paternal stock, I inferred.  He was blue-eyed and fairer than Anne, and the tan of his face was red where hers was dusky.  Nevertheless, I saw a likeness between them deeper than some family trick of expression which, now and again, made me feel their kinship.  For Banks, too, gave me the impression of having a soul that came something nearer the surface of life than is common in average humanity—­a look of vitality, zest, ardour—­I fumbled for a more significant superlative as I returned his stare.  And yet behind that ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at least, a hint of determination and shrewdness that I felt must be inherited from the sound yeoman stock of his father.

Our pause of mutual investigation ended in a smile.  He held out his hand with a pleasant frankness that somehow proclaimed the added colonial quality of him.

“That’s all right,” he said, “but anyway I couldn’t give you any confidences, yet.  I don’t know myself, you see.”

“Are you going back to the Hall?” I asked.

“I don’t know that, either,” he said, and added, “I shan’t go back as the chauffeur, anyway.”

And, indeed, there was little of the chauffeur in his appearance, just then.  He was wearing a light tweed suit and brown brogues, and his clothes sat upon him with just that touch of familiarity, of negligence, that your professional servant’s mufti can never accomplish.

There was a new air of restlessness about him since he had put me under cross-examination.  He looked round him in the broadening day as if he were in search of something, or some one, hopefully yet half-despairingly expected.

“Look here—­if you’d sooner I went...”  I began.

He had risen to his feet after his last statement and was looking back towards the Hall, but he faced me again when I spoke.

“Oh, no!” he said with a hint of weariness.

“It isn’t likely that...”  He broke off and threw himself moodily down on the grass again before he continued, “It’s not that I couldn’t trust you.  But you can see for yourself that it’s better I shouldn’t.  When you get back to the Hall, you might be asked questions and for your own sake it’d look better if you didn’t know the answers.”

“Oh, quite,” I agreed, and added, “I’ll stay and see the sun rise.”

“You won’t see the sun for some time,” he remarked.  “There’ll be a lot of cloud and mist for it to break through.  It’s going to be a scorcher to-day.”

“Good,” I replied; and for a few minutes we discussed weather signs like any other conventional Englishmen.  A natural comparison led us presently to the subject of Canada.  But through it all he bore himself as a man with a preoccupation he could not forget; and I was looking for a good opening to make an excuse of fatigue and go back to the Hall, when something of the thought that was intriguing him broke through the surface of his talk.