ing in the doorway, grasping the edibles and
the sixpence, and consulting with each other, they looked long after his
big figure passing down the road.

CHAPTER XII

Still later, that same morning, Derek and Sheila moved slowly up the
Mallorings' well-swept drive. Their lips were set, as though they had
spoken the last word before battle, and an old cock pheasant, running
into the bushes close by, rose with a whir and skimmed out toward his
covert, scared, perhaps, by something uncompromising in the footsteps of
those two.

Only when actually under the shelter of the porch, which some folk
thought enhanced the old Greek-temple effect of the Mallorings' house,
Derek broke through that taciturnity:

"What if they won't?"

"Wait and see; and don't lose your head, Derek." The man who stood
there when the door opened was tall, grave, wore his hair in powder, and
waited without speech.

"Will you ask Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring if Miss Freeland and Mr.
Derek Freeland could see them, please; and will you say the matter is
urgent?"

The man bowed, left them, and soon came back.

"My lady will see you, miss; Sir Gerald is not in. This way."

Past the statuary, flowers, and antlers of the hall, they traversed a
long, cool corridor, and through a white door entered a white room, not
very large, and very pretty. Two children got up as they came in and
flapped out past them like young partridges, and Lady Malloring rose
from her writing-table and came forward, holding out her hand. The two
young Freelands took it gravely. For all their hostility they could not
withstand the feeling that she would think them terrible young prigs if
they simply bowed. And they looked steadily at one with whom they had
never before been at quite such close quarters. Lady Malloring, who had
originally been the Honorable Mildred Killory, a daughter of Viscount
Silport, was tall, slender, and not very striking, with very fair hair
going rather gray; her expression in repose was pleasant, a little
anxious; only by her eyes was the suspicion awakened that she was a
woman of some character. They had that peculiar look of belonging to two
worlds, so often to be met with in English eyes, a look of self-denying
aspiration, tinctured with the suggestion that denial might not be
confined to self.

In a quite friendly voice she said:

"Can I do anything for you?" And while she waited for an answer her
glance travelled from face to face of the