“When you have seen my mother we will walk through the village. We shall have time before dinner,” said Phyllis, and she turned the car into the carriage-way of a square old house with big windows level with the wall, which stood close to the road.

Mrs. Vanderfelt, a middle-aged woman with shrewd and kindly eyes received him with a touch of nervousness in her manner and, as her daughter had done, talked volubly and a little at random whilst she was giving him some tea.

“I don’t know what you would like to do until dinner time,” she said, and Phyllis said:

“I am going to show Mr. Ravenel the village.”

A glance of comprehension was swiftly exchanged between the mother and the daughter, but not so swiftly but that Paul intercepted it.

“You can get the key at Rapley’s,” said Mrs. Vanderfelt.

The two young people came to four cross-roads, and Paul exclaimed:

“Up the hill to the right, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

They mounted the hill and Paul stopped. He pointed with his stick towards the signboard of an inn built on the high bank above the road.

“Now I know. I lived here once as a child. I always wondered why the Horse Guards had an inn here, and what sort of people they were. I used to imagine that they were half-horse, like the Centaurs, and I always hoped to see them.”

Phyllis Vanderfelt laughed.

“Isn’t that like a man? I show you a place as beautiful as any in England and the only thing which you have remembered of it from the time when you were four is the place where you could get a drink.”

“Yes, the Horseguards’ Inn,” repeated Paul cheerfully. “Let us go on!”

But it was now Phyllis who stopped with a face from which the merriment had gone.

“I don’t know,” she said indecisively. “It shall be as you wish. But I wonder. We talked it all over at home. We couldn’t tell whether it would be helpful to you, whether you would care to remember everything to-morrow—whether you already remembered. My father was quite clear that you should see 

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