At this moment Betty came flying after them, announcing that _déjeûner_ was ready, and that everybody was waiting.
It was a merry meal, thanks entirely to Camilla and the children, and very shortly afterwards the motor-party started again from Dieppe. When they were gone, Mrs. Brenton said to Caroline--
"I don't fancy Sammy will come here any more. I tried to get five minutes alone with him, but he avoided me."
Betty pushed a letter into Caroline's hands.
"You're to read that when you're quite alone. Sammy gived it to me," she said mysteriously; then she danced off, and Mrs. Brenton, with one quick glance at the girl, turned and went into the hotel.
Caroline walked into the garden. She crossed the bridge under which the clear white water of the mountain spring ran down to the sea, and opened Broxbourne's letter. Inside the envelope there was a sheet of paper on which nothing was written. Inside this paper there was a cheque.
She just glanced at it and then crushed it in her hand.
Rupert Haverford came back from America about the beginning of October. He went down immediately to Yelverton.
The children were still with Mrs. Brenton--that is to say, they had gone for a brief while to stay with their mother; but the visit had not been a success, and Camilla herself proposed that she should make some arrangement to let the little folk stay for a few months longer under Mrs. Brenton's care.
"You see, we haven't got a house yet," she said; "nothing would induce Cuthbert to live in the house his mother left him. We must get that off our hands before we settle ourselves in another, and then I think we shall go to the Riviera this winter. He has several portraits that he wants to paint there."
"I have two minds to ask Rupert to lend us that big house of his. It is absurd to shut it up for months at a time when we are homeless."
It was, therefore, as much on the children's account as anything else that Haverford went to Yelverton.
Nevertheless, he found himself travelling down to Mrs. Brenton's comfortable house with a sense of eagerness that was half pleasure.
The reason for his visit to the States had not been wrongly reported; chance had brought to his knowledge the fact that there were some connections of Matthew Woolgar settled in America--humble, struggling people to whom money would be a godsend.