magazine in a deck-chair. That morning she and Alice had broken the
convention of the house and gone riding in the haughlands till lunch.
Now she suffered the penalty and dozed, but her companion was very wide
awake, being a tireless creature who knew not lethargy. Besides, there
was sufficient in prospect to stir her curiosity. Lady Manorwater had
announced some twenty times that day that her nephew Lewis would come to
tea, and Alice, knowing the truth of the prophecy, was prepared to
receive him.

The image of the forsaken angler remained clear in her memory, and she
confessed to herself that he interested her. The girl had no
connoisseur's eye for character; her interest was the frank and
unabashed interest in a somewhat mysterious figure who was credited by
all his friends with great gifts and a surprising amiability. After
breakfast she had captured one of the spectacled people, whose name was
Hoddam. He was a little shy man, one of the unassuming tribe of
students by whom all the minor intellectual work of the world is done,
and done well. It is a great class, living in the main in red-brick
villas on the outskirts of academic towns, marrying mild blue-stockings,
working incessantly, and finally attaining to the fame of mention in
prefaces and foot-notes, and a short paragraph in the _Times_ at the
last. . . . Mr. Hoddam did not seek the company of one who was young,
pretty, an heiress, and presumably flippant, but he was flattered when
she plainly sought him.

"Mr. Lewis Haystoun is coming here this afternoon," she had announced.
"Do you know him?"

"I have read his book," said her victim.