to make a day of it. The two started off together
through the wood, the scented air floating round them, and bringing to
Rendel, as he strode along with a congenial companion, a sense of mental
and physical relief as though the atmosphere of both kinds that he was
breathing were as different from that which had weighed him down a
fortnight ago as the scent of the aromatic pines was from the air of the
London streets. Wentworth was full of talk, of a kind it must be
confessed which left his hearer at the end without any very distinct
impression of what it had been about, although it passed the time
agreeably and genially. He had his usual detached air, which Rendel had
always been accustomed to find a relief as opposed to his own strenuous
attitude, of standing aloof as an amused spectator of human
contingencies.

"I haven't seen you for ever so long," Wentworth was saying. "What
became of you at the end of the season? You vanished somehow, didn't
you?"

"We were in mourning, you know," Rendel replied.

"Ah, to be sure, yes, Sir William Gore died," said Wentworth, attuning
his voice to what he considered a suitable key, on the assumption that
Rendel would feel still more bound to be loyal to his father-in-law now
than when, as he put it to himself, the "old humbug" was alive. "Poor
Mrs. Rendel, she looks as if it had been a great blow to her."

"Yes," said Rendel, "it was; and she has been ill besides." And he told
Wentworth briefly of what had happened to Rachel, and the condition she
was in, and the reassuring hopes held out by the doctors that she would
almost certainly recover her normal state.

"I am very glad to hear that," said Wentworth cheerily. "Then you must
come to London and start life again, Rendel, now you are free. Sir
William Gore was rather a responsibility, I daresay."

"Yes," said Rendel, "he was."

"Let me see," said Wentworth, "it was just about when he died, I
suppose, that Stamfordham published that sensational agreement with
Germany?"

"Yes," said Rendel, "it was the day before he died."

"Ah," said Wentworth, "the day before? Then of course you didn't realise
the excitement it was. By Jove! of course you know I'm not 'in' all that
sort of thing myself, but I must say I never saw such a fuss and fizz as
it was. The way it was sprung on people too! It was an awfully bold
thing to do, you know; but it turned up trumps after all, that's the
point. Stamfordham isn't like any body else, and