to listen to the larks, watched the sea-gulls float low over the lapping
waters, without paying the slightest attention to any one of them. The
instinctive cunning which never deserted him led him without any
conscious effort to assume a pleasure in these things which, as a matter
of fact, he found entirely meaningless. It led him, too, to choose a
retired spot for those periods of intensely close observation to which he
every now and then subjected his host and the woman who was now his
partner in the game. What he saw entirely satisfied him. Yet the way was
scarcely clear.

They caught him up near one of the greens, and he stood with his hands
behind him, and his eyeglass securely fixed, gravely watching them
approach and put for the hole. To him the whole performance seemed
absolutely idiotic, but he showed no sign of anything save a mild and
genial interest. Clara, Mannering's niece, who was immensely impressed
with him, lingered behind.

"Don't you really care for any games at all, Sir Leslie?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I know that you think me a barbarian," he remarked, smiling.

"On the contrary," she declared, "that is probably what you think us. I
suppose they are really a waste of time when one has other things to do!
Only down here, you see, there is nothing else to do."

He looked at her thoughtfully. He had never yet in his life spoken half a
dozen words with man, woman or child without wondering whether they might
not somehow or other contribute towards his scheme of life. Clara