his lips and closed
them again. The jocular reference to Lady Jane remained unspoken.
There was something in the calm aloofness of the man by his side which
intimidated even while it annoyed him. Soon they commenced the drop
from the moorland to where, far away below, the Manor with its lawn and
gardens and outbuildings seemed like a child's pleasure palace. Miller
leaned forward and pointed downwards.

"There's Dartrey sitting on the terrace," he pointed out. "Dartrey and
Nora Miall. You've heard of her, I expect?"

"I know her by repute, of course," Tallente admitted. "She is a very
brilliant young woman. It will give me great pleasure to meet her."

CHAPTER IX

Tallente took tea that afternoon with his three guests upon the terrace.
Before them towered the wood-embosomed cliffs, with here and there great
red gashes of scarred sandstone. Beyond lay the sloping meadow, with
its clumps of bracken and grey stone walls, and in the background a more
rugged line of rocky cliffs. The sea in the bay flashed and glittered
in the long rays of the afternoon sunshine. The scene was
extraordinarily peaceful. Stephen Dartrey for the first few minutes
certainly justified his reputation for taciturnity. He leaned back in a
long wicker chair, his head resting upon his hand, his thoughtful eyes
fixed upon vacancy. No man in those days could have resembled less a
popular leader of the people. In appearance he was a typical
aristocrat, and his expression, notwithstanding his fine forehead and
thoughtful eyes, was marked with a certain simplicity which in his
younger days had lured many an inexperienced debater on to ridicule and
extinction. In an intensely curious age, Dartrey was still a man over
whose personality controversy raged fiercely. He was a poet, a dreamer,
a writer of elegant prose, an orator, an artist. And behind all these
things there was a flame in the man, a perfect passion for justice, for
seeing people in their right places, which had led him from the more
flowery ways into the world of politics. His enemies called him a
dilettante and a poseur. His friends were led into rhapsodies through
sheer affection. His supporters hailed him as the one man of genius who
held out the scales of justice before the world.

"Of course," Nora Miall observed, looking up at her host pleasantly, "I
can see what is going to happen. Mr. Dartrey came out here to talk to
you upon most important matters. This place, the beauty of it