e. And now, if I may offer a suggestion, it is that we take
tea. Freed of its tannin, nothing, I think, is more refreshing and
stimulating."

"There's a train from Lyndhurst at thirteen minutes to six," said
Widgery, unfolding a time table. "That gives us about half an hour or
three-quarters here--if a conveyance is obtainable, that is."

"A gelatine lozenge dropped into the tea cup precipitates the tannin in
the form of tannate of gelatine," said the clergyman to Miss Mergle, in
a confidential bray.

Jessie stood up, and saw through the window a depressed head and
shoulders over the top of the back of a garden seat. She moved towards
the door. "While you have tea, mother," she said, "I must tell Mr.
Hoopdriver of our arrangements."

"Don't you think I--" began the clergyman.

"No," said Jessie, very rudely; "I don't."

"But, Jessie, haven't you already--"

"You are already breaking the capitulation," said Jessie.

"Will you want the whole half hour?" said Widgery, at the bell.

"Every minute," said Jessie, in the doorway. "He's behaved very nobly to
me."

"There's tea," said Widgery.

"I've had tea."

"He may not have behaved badly," said the clergyman. "But he's certainly
an astonishingly weak person to let a wrong-headed young girl--"

Jessie closed the door into the garden.

Meanwhile Mr. Hoopdriver made a sad figure in the sunlight outside. It
was over, this wonderful excursion of his, so far as she was concerned,
and with the swift blow that separated them, he realised all that those
days had done for him. He tried to grasp the bearings of their position.
Of course, they would take her away to those social altitudes of hers.
She would become an inaccessible young lady again. Would they let him
say good-bye to her?

How extraordinary it had all been! He recalled the moment when he had
first seen her riding, with the sunlight behind her, along the riverside
road; he recalled that wonderful night at Bognor, remembering it as if
everything had been done of his own initiative. "Brave, brave!" she had
called him. And afterwards, when she came down to him in the morning,
kindly, quiet. But ought he to have persuaded her then to return to
her home? He remembered some intention of the sort. Now these people
snatched her away from him as though he was scarcely fit to live in the
same world with her. No more he was! He felt he had presumed upon her
worldly ignorance in travelling with her day after day.