"To Darby Dillon!" repeated Dearest George, sitting down on the damp steps.
Basil Stafford offered his congratulations on almost the same spot where the three had stood in the autumn.
It was fair spring now, nearly May, with a blue glint on the water. But Gheena had been out for a swim and had come in glowing, while Crabbit still pursued gulls and hoped to catch one.
Darby sat in a sheltered nook. His face had grown thinner; some inward war had drawn lines round his mouth. A lithe figure sat beside him--Psyche, with some of her light gaiety gone too. Basil remarked that he had come to congratulate, and he also looked quiet and subdued.
"Oh, thank you very much," said Gheena. "Lancelot had three helpings of beefsteak pie yesterday, and Dearest is glooming at the Dower House over the expense of putting in radiators. I'll never let mother go there, of course, but the radiators won't matter."
"Even in war time," said Basil thoughtfully. "Mr. Freyne looks quite thin."
"He says we shall lose the war now and nothing will matter," said Psyche, "and he's going out to drive a motor ambulance if they'll take him."
"Everyone," said Gheena, "is doing something now."
"And perhaps I am too," he said a little impatiently, "even if it's not what people think."
There was open hostility in Gheena's eyes when she replied that perhaps he was.
She climbed the cliff lightly, slow Darby left behind then jumped back again and slipped, Stafford springing up to help her, both young and strong and whole-limbed. Darby's sticks went slowly and heavily as he toiled up.
"Just here," he said, "we thought of the scratch pack. I have not sent them back yet, they amuse me; but they must go next week, after one more hunt."
"It will be so awful when one can't see you hunting hounds." Little Psyche's eyes were full of the admiration which Darby never saw in anyone else's.
"Which you think I do well," he said, laughing.
Psyche replied that he did everything well, and Gheena came up the cliffs again, kindness in her eyes, friendship; but as he limped on, Darby had seen her look at Basil Stafford. The lines of pain deepened in Darby's face; then he laughed again. He was no worse off than he had been six months before, and he had helped Gheena on. Now that she was engaged, with the prospect of taking over her inheritance when she chose, Dearest George was perpetually apologetic and almost wistfully anxious to please. He had referred to the engagement to his wife as being in the nature of a trench mortar--something hurled at him when he slept.