"Good-bye." She smiled at him with a hint of mischief in her eyes. "You won't forget the fifteenth? I shan't believe any excuses about urgent cases!"
He smiled too.
"I shan't tax your credulity," he said, "and I hope you won't forget your promise!"
Their mutual smile, and the hint of an understanding between them which Anstice's last words, perhaps intentionally, conveyed, brought a frown to Cheniston's bronzed forehead.
"Oh, by the way, Anstice"--he spoke very deliberately, looking the other man full in the face the while--"I want to have a chat with you--on a matter of some little importance to us both. When are you likely to be at liberty?"
The brightness died from Anstice's face; and when he answered his voice was devoid of any note of youth.
"I am generally at liberty late in the evening," he said coolly. "If the matter is important I can see you at nine o clock to-night. You'll come to my place?"
"Thanks." Bruce took out his cigarette case and having selected a cigarette handed the case to the other. "Then, if convenient to you, I will be round at nine this evening."
"Very good." Anstice declined a cigarette rather curtly. "If I should be unavoidably detained elsewhere I will ring you up."
"Right." Bruce picked up his racquet and turned to Iris as though to say the subject was closed. "Are you ready, Iris? You like this side best, I know."
And, with a sudden premonition of evil at his heart, Anstice turned away and left them together in the sunny garden.