"Why not?"
"I should have thought—Some one told me nobody would call upon them. Lady Lucas least of all."
"I didn't think you stooped to run with the tide."
"Of course, my father as a clergyman would do anything he could. But if they are not in our Parish—"
"Then you'll wrap yourself in your superior virtue, and hold aloof, like the rest of the world?"
Jean was puzzled at the mortified feeling in his tone.
"I can't understand. How came they to be your friends? Don't think me hard upon them, please, because I can only know what I have been told . . . Miss Devereux will not call."
"You don't suppose I am going to be in leading-strings to aunt Sybella all my life."
"No—only—Where did you come across them first?"
"Last autumn, in Switzerland. Captain Lucas and I met first on a mountain-top—overtaken by the same storm; and we took refuge in the same hut. After that we saw a lot of one another. I had walks with him and his daughter—and I used to go in for afternoon tea. Aunt Sybella was seedy, with any amount of coddling on hand; so I pleased myself."