As the car started slowly up the hill he turned, laying his black and tan velvet muzzle on the back of the hood. Long after they had vanished, Ruth was haunted by the wistful amber eyes looking at her from a cloud of dust.
Slowly she went up home through the scented evening. It had been a wonderful day. And she had made a friend. It was not such an event as it would have been before she went to France, but it was sufficiently uplifting even now. She sang to herself as she went. And then quite suddenly she thought of the man in the brown suit. “I wonder who he was, and where he disappeared to,” she said to herself, as she answered Miss McCox’s injured summons to supper.
CHAPTER III
“My dear Roger,” said Mrs. North, with that peculiar guinea-hen quality in her voice which it was her privilege and pleasure to keep especially for her husband, “have you nothing of interest to tell us? No one has seen you since four o’clock yesterday afternoon. At any rate, not to speak to.”
North looked across the beautifully appointed lunch-table at the ill-chosen partner of his joys and sorrows, while the silence, which usually followed one of her direct attacks on him, fell upon the party surrounding it.
“I see you brought Larry back with you, and conclude you found him at Thorpe,” continued Mrs. North, “and I suppose you saw Miss Seer. As it is a moot point whether we call on her or not, you might rouse yourself so far as to tell us what you thought of her. I am sure Arthur would like to hear too.”
“Very much! Very much!” said the fair, cherubic-looking little man sitting on her right hand. “Thorpe was such a pleasant house in poor dear Carey’s time. It would be a serious loss if the new owner were impossible. I look upon the changes in the neighbourhood very seriously, very seriously indeed. I was only thinking yesterday that of our old circle only poor old Mentmore, the Condors, and ourselves are left. The Court and Whitemead both bought by newly rich people, whom I really dread inspecting.”
“The St. Ubes may be all right,” interpolated Mrs. North. “I hear they made their money doing something with shipping, and St. Ubes does not sound a bad name.”
“No,” allowed Mr. Fothersley. “No. Yet I do not remember to have heard it before. It has a Cornish sound. We must inquire. They have not arrived yet, I gather, as the new servants’ wing is not ready. But the people at the Grange, I fear, are not only Jews, but German Jews! What a milieu! And we were such a happy little set before the war, very happy—yes.”
“At any rate,” said the fourth member of the lunch party, a very beautiful young woman, the only child and married daughter of the house, “they have all an amazing amount of money, which I have no doubt they are prepared to spend, and the German Jews I conclude you will not take up. As for Thorpe, it is disgusting that anyone should have it. What is the woman like, father?”