Afterwards

The invitation so heartily given was accepted with a pleasure to which Anstice had long been a stranger; and then he said good-bye to his kind host and left Greengates feeling that he had found two unexpectedly congenial friends in Iris Wayne and her father.

He had been deeply, genuinely interested in Sir Richard's story, that unhappy story in which Chloe Carstairs figured so tragically; yet as he made his way homewards between the blossoming hedgerows his mind dwelt upon another woman, a younger, happier woman than the pale mistress of Cherry Orchard. And the face which floated before his eyes in the starlit spring dusk was the laughing, grey-eyed face of Iris Wayne.