“Number three, please,” she began. “Are you the hotel? The manager? Good! I am speaking for Lady Cranston. She wishes a sitting-room, bedroom and bath-room reserved for a friend of ours who is arriving to-day—a Mr. Hamar Lessingham. You have his luggage already, I believe. Please do the best you can for him.—Certainly.—Thank you very much.”
She set down the receiver. The door was quickly opened and shut. Philippa reappeared, carrying an armful of clothes.
“Why, you've brought his grey suit,” Helen cried in dismay, “the one he looks so well in!”
“Don't be an idiot,” Philippa scoffed. “I had to bring the first I could find. Take them in to Mr. Lessingham, and for heaven's sake see that he hurries! Henry's train is due, and he may be here at any moment.”
“I'll tell him,” Helen promised. “I'll smuggle him out of the back way, if you like.”
Philippa laughed a little drearily.
“A nice start that would be, if any one ever traced his arrival!” she observed. “No, we must try and get him away before Henry comes, but, if the worst comes to the worst, we'll have him in and introduce him. Henry isn't likely to notice anything,” she added, a little bitterly.
Helen disappeared with the clothes and returned almost immediately, Philippa was sitting in her old position by the fire.
“You're not worrying about this, dear, are you?” the former asked anxiously.
“I don't know,” Philippa replied, without turning her head. “I don't know what may come of it, Helen. I have a queer sort of feeling about that man.”
Helen sighed. “I suppose,” she confessed, “I am the narrowest person on earth. I can think of one thing, and one thing only. If Mr. Lessingham keeps his word, Dick will be here perhaps in a month, perhaps six weeks—certainly soon!”
“He will keep his word,” Philippa said quietly. “He is that sort of man.”
The door on the other side of the room was softly opened. Lessingham's head appeared.
“Could I have a necktie?” he asked diffidently. Philippa stretched out her hand and took one from the basket by her side.
“Better give him this,” she said, handing it over to Helen. “It is one of Henry's which I was mending.—Stop!”
She put up her finger. They all listened.
“The car!” Philippa exclaimed, rising hastily to her feet. “That is Henry! Go out with Mr. Lessingham, Helen,” she continued, “and wait until he is ready. Don't forget that he is an ordinary caller, and bring him in presently.”
Helen nodded understandingly and hurried out.
Philippa moved a few steps towards the other door. In a moment it was thrown open. Nora appeared, with her arm through her father's.
“I went to meet him, Mummy,” she explained. “No uniform—isn't it a shame!”
Sir Henry patted her cheek and turned to greet his wife. There was a shadow upon his bronzed, handsome face as he watched her rather hesitating approach.
“Sorry I couldn't catch your train, Phil,” he told her. “I had to make a call in the city so I came down from Liverpool Street. Any luck?”
She held his hands, resisting for the moment his proffered embrace.
“Henry,” she said earnestly, “do you know I am so much more anxious to hear your news.”
“Mine will keep,” he replied. “What about Richard?”
She shook her head.
“I spent the whole of my time making enquiries,” she sighed, “and every one was fruitless. I failed to get the least satisfaction from any one at the War Office. They know nothing, have heard nothing.”
“I'm ever so sorry to hear it,” Sir Henry declared sympathetically. “You mustn't worry too much, though, dear. Where's Helen?”
“She is in the gun room with a caller.”
“With a caller?” Nora exclaimed. “Is it any one from the Depot? I must go and see.”
“You needn't trouble,” her stepmother replied. “Here they are, coming in.”
The door on the opposite side of the room was suddenly opened, and Hamar Lessingham and Helen entered together. Lessingham was entirely at his ease—their conversation, indeed, seemed almost engrossing. He came at once across the room on realising Sir Henry's presence.
“This is Mr. Hamar Lessingham—my husband,” Philippa said. “Mr. Lessingham was at college with Dick, Henry, so of course Helen and he have been indulging in all sorts of reminiscences.”
The two men shook hands.
“I found time also to examine your Leech prints,” Lessingham remarked. “You have some very admirable examples.”
“Quite a hobby of mine in my younger days,” Sir Henry admitted. “One or two of them are very good, I believe. Are you staying in these parts long, Mr. Lessingham?”
“Perhaps for a week or two,” was the somewhat indifferent reply. “I am told that this is the most wonderful air in the world, so I have come down here to pull up again after a slight illness.”
“A dreary spot just now,” Sir Henry observed, “but the air's all right. Are you a sea-fisherman, by any chance, Mr. Lessingham?”
“I have done a little of it,” the visitor confessed. Sir Henry's face lit up. He drew from his pocket a small, brown paper parcel.
“I don't mind telling you,” he confided as he cut the string, “that I don't think there's another sport like it in the world. I have tried most of them, too. When I was a boy I was all for shooting, perhaps because I could never get enough. Then I had a season or two at Melton, though I was never much of a horseman. But for real, unadulterated excitement, for sport that licks everything else into a cocked hat, give me a strong sea rod, a couple of traces, just enough sea to keep on the bottom all the time, and the codling biting. Look here, did you ever see a mackerel spinner like that?” he added, drawing one out of the parcel which he had untied. “Look at it, all of you.”
Lessingham took it gingerly in his fingers. Philippa, a little ostentatiously, turned her back upon the two men and took up a newspaper.
“Lady Cranston does not sympathize with my interest in any sort of sport just now,” Sir Henry explained good-humouredly. “All the same I argue that one must keep one's mind occupied somehow or other.”
“Quite right, Dad!” Nora agreed. “We must carry on, as the Colonel says. All the same, I did hope you'd come down in a new naval uniform, with lots of gold braid on your sleeve. I think they might have made you an admiral, Daddy, you'd look so nice on the bridge.”
“I am afraid,” her father replied, with his eyes glued upon the spinner which Lessingham
