"Shall I go and tell them?"
"No need. I'll come. Can you pay the driver? I'm cleared out completely."
In the salon upstairs were Colonel and Mrs. Baron, and with them was Lucille, as often now was her custom. She had gradually become almost a member of the Baron family, and they were extremely fond of her. When Roy flung the door open, and marched triumphantly in, his arm through Ivor's, one startled "Ah-h!" broke from her, before the other two had grasped what was happening; and then her face, usually almost without colour, became crimson. Her eyes shone, the lips remaining apart.
"Denham!" the Colonel and his wife exclaimed.
Colonel Baron's grasp of Ivor's hand and his fixed gaze were like those of Roy. Mrs. Baron's delight was even more plainly expressed.
"This is joy! O this is joy!" she said. "Nothing else could be so great a happiness—except going home. Welcome, welcome!" Then she held his hand, with eyes full of tears searching his face. "But, my dear Denham, you have been ill—surely you have been ill. How thin!—how altered! What have you been doing to yourself?"
"He has walked the whole way here from Valenciennes," cried Roy, before Denham could speak. "He was to have ridden, and he gave up the horse to somebody else."
"Was that necessary?" the Colonel asked.
"I thought it so, sir. Any letters from home?"
"One from Mrs. Fairbank a few weeks since. That is all. Good accounts of Polly and Molly. Have you not heard from them?"