"Always?"
"Ever since Mr. Stretton left," she said.
"Give them a holiday. I want you. There are lots of things we have to talk about."
"Are there? I thought there was nothing left to say," said she, sweetly but coldly. "But I am going to Dunmuir at half-past two this afternoon, and you can drive down with me if you like."
She passed on, and shut herself into the study with the children. Percival felt injured. "She should not have brought me all the way from London if she had nothing to say," he grumbled. "I'll go back to-night. And I might as well go and see Colquhoun this morning."
He went down to Mr. Colquhoun's office, and was not received very cordially by that gentleman. The interview resulted in rather a violent quarrel, which ended by Percival being requested to leave Mr. Colquhoun's presence, and not return to it uninvited. Mr. Colquhoun could not easily forgive him for neglecting to inform the Luttrells, at the earliest opportunity, of Brian's reappearance. "We should have saved time, money, anxiety: we might have settled the matter without troubling Miss Murray, or agitating Mrs. Luttrell; and I call it downright dishonesty to have concealed a fact which was of such vital importance," said Mr. Colquhoun, who had lost his temper. And Percival flung himself out of the room in a rage.
He was still inwardly fuming when he seated himself beside Elizabeth that afternoon in a little low carriage drawn by two grey ponies—an equipage which she specially affected—in order to drive to Dunmuir. For full five minutes neither of them spoke, but at last Elizabeth said, with a faint accent of surprise:—
"I thought you had something to say to me."
"I have so many things that I don't know where to begin. Have you nothing to say—about what I told you last night?"
"I can only say that I am very glad of it."