"What did you
ever have against him?"
He looked sharply at his brother. The disagreeable idea crossed his mind
that his father, whose weakness for Maurice he well knew, might have told
the story to the lad.
Maurice laughed, and pulled his scanty moustache as he turned away.
"Oh! I don't know--we never hit it off. My fault, of course. Ta, ta."
As Stephen rode away he was haunted for a few minutes by some
disagreeable reminiscences of a school holiday when Maurice had been
discovered drunk in one of the public-houses of the village by the
Rector, who had firmly dug him out and walked him home. But this and
other recollections, not dissimilar, soon passed away, under the steady
assault of thoughts far more compelling....
* * * * *
He took the bridle-path through Maudeley, and was presently aware, in a
clearing of the wood, of the figure of Meynell in front of him.
The Rector was walking in haste, without his dogs. He was therefore out
on business, which indeed was implied by the energy of his whole
movement.
He looked round, frowning as Stephen overtook him.
"Is that you, Stephen? Are you going home?"
"Yes. And you?"
Meynell did not immediately reply. The autumn wood, a splendour of
gold and orange leaf overhead, of red-brown leaf below, with passages
here and there where the sun struck through the beech trees, of purest
lemon-yellow, or intensest green, breathed and murmured round them.
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