For the first time in all her vigorous young life Molly found her courage at so low an ebb that she was by no means sure that she could rely upon it to carry her through.

She spent the rest of that day in trying to screw herself up to what she privately termed “the necessary pitch of impudence.”

* * * * *

At nine o’clock on the following morning Lord Wyverton, sitting at breakfast alone in the little coffee-room of the Red Lion, heard a voice he recognized speak his name in the passage outside.

“Lord Wyverton,” it said, “is he down?”

Lord Wyverton rose and went to the door.  He met the landlady just entering with a basket of eggs in her hand.  She dropped him a curtsy.

“It’s Miss Molly from the Vicarage, my lord,” she said.

Molly herself stood in the background.  Behind the landlady’s broad back she also executed a village bob.

“I had to come with the eggs.  We supply Mrs. Richards with eggs.  And it seemed unneighbourly to go away without seeing your lordship,” she said.

She looked at him with wonderful dark eyes that met his own with unreserved directness.  He told himself as he shook hands that this girl was a great beauty and would be a magnificent woman some day.

“I am pleased to see you,” he said, with quiet courtesy.  “It was kind of you to look me up.  Will you come into the garden?”

“I haven’t much time to spare,” said Molly.  “It’s my cake morning.  You are coming round to the Vicarage, aren’t you?  Can’t we walk together?”

“Certainly,” he replied at once, “if you think I shall not be too early a visitor.”

Molly’s lips parted in a little smile.  “We begin our day at six,” she said.

“What energy!” he commented.  “I am only energetic when I am on a holiday.”

“You’re on business now, then?” queried Molly.

He looked at her keenly as they passed out upon the sunlit road.  “I think you know what my business is,” he said.

She did not respond.  “I’ll take you through the fields,” she said.  “It’s a short cut.  Don’t you want to smoke?”

There was something in her manner that struck him as not altogether natural.  He pondered over it as he lighted a cigarette.

“They are cutting the grass in the church fields,” said Molly.  “Don’t you hear?”

Through the slumberous summer air came the whir of the machine.  It was June.

“It’s the laziest sound on earth,” said Wyverton.

Molly turned off the road to a stile.  “You ought to take a holiday,” she said, as she mounted it.

He vaulted the railing beside it and gave her his hand.  “I’m not altogether a drone, Miss Neville,” he said.

Molly seated herself on the top bar and surveyed him.  “Of course not,” she said.  “You are here on business, aren’t you?”

Wyverton’s extended hand fell to his side.  “Now what is it you want to say to me?” he asked her, quietly.