This long dingle ran
for miles through the foot-growth of folding hills. It was beloved of
jays; but of human beings there were none, except a chicken-farmer's
widow, who lived in a house thatched almost to the ground, and made her
livelihood by directing tourists, with such cunning that they soon came
back to her for tea.
It was while throwing a rather longer line than usual to reach a little
dark piece of crisp water that Lord Dennis heard the swishing and
crackling of someone advancing at full speed. He frowned slightly,
feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish startled. The
invader was Miltoun, hot, pale, dishevelled, with a queer, hunted look
on his face. He stopped on seeing his great-uncle, and instantly assumed
the mask of his smile.
Lord Dennis was not the man to see what was not intended for him, and he
merely said:
"Well, Eustace!" as he might have spoken, meeting his nephew in the hall
of one of his London Clubs.
Miltoun, no less polite, murmured:
"Hope I haven't lost you anything."
Lord Dennis shook his head, and laying his rod on the bank, said:
"Sit down and have a chat, old fellow. You don't fish, I think?"
He had not, in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask;
his eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty
years' suffering of his own on account of a woman--ancient history
now--which had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of
suffering in others.
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