A grove of trees half-girdled the house, and this, together with the
sheltering upward trend of the downs on one side of it, tempered the
violence of the fierce winds which sometimes swept the coast-line even
in summer.

Behind the house, under the lee of the rising upland, lay the gardens
of Mallow, witness to the loving care of generations. Stretches of
lawn, coolly green and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the
whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved
past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by
trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land
admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked
together by short flights of grass-grown steps.

"I can't understand why you spend so much time in stuffy old London,
Kitty, when you have this heavenly place to come to."

Nan spoke from a nest of half-a-dozen cushions heaped together beneath
the shade of a tree. Here she was lounging luxuriously, smoking
innumerable Turkish cigarettes, while Kitty swung tranquilly in a
hammock close by. Penelope had been invisible since lunch time. They
had all been down at Mallow the better part of a month, and she and
Ralph Fenton quite frequently absented themselves, "hovering," as Barry
explained, "on the verge of an engagement."

"My dear, the longer I stay in town, the more thoroughly I enjoy the
country when we come here. I get the quintessence of enjoyment by
treating Mallow as a liqueur."

Nan laughed. There was a faint flavour of bitterness in her laughter.

"Practically most of our good times in this world are only to be
obtained in the liqueur form. The gods don't make a habit of offering
you a big jug of enjoyment."

"If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the
shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.

Nan smiled whole-heartedly.

"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!"

"I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened,
and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls
had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in
knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.

"Good gracious, Roger, how you made me jump!" And Kitty hurriedly
lowered a pair of smartly-shod feet which had been occupying a somewhat
elevated position in the hammock.

"I'm sorry. How d'you do, Kit? And how are you, Miss Davenant?"
answered the new-com