Chapter IV
HUGH had found a comfortable chair in the lee of an acacia thicket, whence he looked over a stretch of low bracken to the lawn which swept from the house along the edge of the escarpment to the home woods. The sunshine lay warm around him, but the clear air had none of the sultriness of noon. Rather it burned like some dry ether, with an aromatic freshness in its heat. In accordance with his good resolutions he was renewing his acquaintance with the classics, and was reading aloud to himself the exquisite cadences of Theocritus's Seventh Idyll.
"I am the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbet!" said a voice at his elbow, and Lady Flora, with an armful of books, sank upon the mossy turf beside him. "No! Stay where you are. I want to sit here. Poor Mr Somerville, I've come to disturb you a
