"My dear," said the old man when she went out to him, speaking in some haste and agitation, "I have just met at the hotel a friend of yours from Melbourne—Mr. Yelverton. He came by the coach last night. He says Mrs. Duff-Scott sent him up to see how you are getting on, and to report to her. He is going away again to-morrow, and I did not like to put off our trip, so I have asked him to join us. I hope I have not done wrong"—looking anxiously into her rapidly changing face—"I hope you won't think that I have taken a liberty, my dear."
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.
He was talking to Patty and Eleanor in the garden when Elizabeth went out to him, looking cool and colonial in a silk coat and a solar topee. The girls were chatting gaily; the old lawyer was sketching a programme of the day's proceedings, and generally doing the honours of his neighbourhood with polite vivacity. Two buggies, one single and one double, in charge of a groom from the hotel, were drawn up by the gate, and Mrs. Harris and "the gal" were busily packing them with luncheon baskets and rugs. There was a cloudless summer sky overhead—a miracle of loveliness spread out before them in the shining plain of the sea; and the delicate, fresh, salt air, tremulous with the boom of subterranean breakers, was more potent than any wine to make glad the heart of man and to give him a cheerful countenance.
Very cheerfully did Mr. Yelverton come forward to greet his beloved, albeit a little moved with the sentiment of the occasion. He had parted from her in a ball-room, with a half-spoken confession of—something that she knew all about quite as well as he did—on his lips; and he had followed her now to say the rest, and to hear what she had to reply to it. This was perfectly understood by both of them, as they shook hands, with a little conventional air of unexpectedness, and he told her that he had come at Mrs. Duff-Scott's orders.
"She could not rest," he said, gravely, "until she was sure that you had found pleasant quarters, and were comfortable. She worried about you—and so she sent me up."
"It was troubling you too much," Elizabeth murmured, evading his direct eyes, but quite unable to hide her agitation from him.
"You say that from politeness, I suppose? No, it was not troubling me at all—quite the contrary. I am delighted with my trip. And I am glad," he concluded, dropping his voice, "to see the place where you were brought up. This was your home, was it not?" He looked all round him.
"It was not like this when we were here," she replied. "The house was old then—now it is new. They have done it up."