"Is she back?"

"Who?" I asked. I was thinking of his sister, and could find no
application for this question.

"Miss Jervaise."

"Oh--er--Miss Brenda? No. She hadn't come in when I left the house."

"What time was that?"

"About four. I came straight here."

"Not back, eh?" he commented with a soft, low whistle, that mingled, I
thought, something of gladness with its surprise.

"You don't know where she is, then?" I ventured.

He turned and looked at me suspiciously. "I don't see why I should help
your friends," he said.

I realised that my position was a difficult one. My sympathies were
entirely with Banks. I felt that if there was to be any question of making
allowances, I wanted to be on the side of Brenda and the Home Farm. But,
at the same time, I could not deny that I owed something--loyalty, was
it?--to the Jervaises. I pondered that for a few seconds before I spoke
again, and by then I had found what I believed to be a tolerable attitude,
though I was to learn later that it compromised me no less than if I had
frankly thrown in my lot with the Banks faction.

"You are quite right," I said. "And I would sooner you gave me no
confidences, now I come to think of it. But I should like you to know, all
the same, that I'm not taking sides in this affair. I have no intention,
for instance, of telling them at the Hall that I've seen you."

The daylight was flooding up from the North-West, now, in a great stream
that had flushed the whole landscape with colour; and I could see the full
significance of honest inquiry in my companion's face as he probed me with
his stare. But I could meet his gaze without confusion. My purpose was
single enough, and if I had had a moment's doubt of him when he failed to
respond to my mood of fantasy; I was now fully prepared to accept him
without qualification.

He was not like his sister in appearance. He favoured the paternal stock,
I inferred. He was blue-eyed and fairer than Anne, and the tan of his face
was red where hers was dusky. Nevertheless, I saw a likeness between them
deeper than some family trick of expression which, now and again, made me
feel their kinship. For Banks, too, gave me the impression of having a
soul that came something nearer the surface of life than is common in
average humanity--a look of vitality, zest, ardour--I fumbled for a more
significant superlative as I returned his stare. And yet behind that
ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at l