“You gave me such a start,” was all that Irene could say. Her face was quite pale.
“I’m exceedingly sorry,” said Chelifer. There was a long and, for Irene, embarrassing silence.
After a minute she went down again.
“Did you find him?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle, when her niece emerged a little while later on to the terrace.
Irene shook her head. Somehow she lacked the courage to tell Aunt Lilian the story of her adventure. It would make her too unhappy to think that Chelifer was prepared to climb two hundred and thirty-two steps for the sake of getting out of her way.
Mrs. Aldwinkle tried to guard against his habit of vanishing by never, so far as it was practicable, letting him out of her sight. She arranged that he should always sit next to her at table. She took him for walks and drives in the motor car, she made him sit with her in the garden. It was with difficulty and only by the employment of stratagems that Chelifer managed to procure a moment of liberty and solitude. For the first few days of his stay Chelifer found that: “I must go and write” was a good excuse to get away. Mrs. Aldwinkle professed such admiration for him in his poetical capacity that she could not decently refuse to let him go. But she soon found a way of controlling such liberty as he could get in this way by insisting that he should write under the ilex trees, or in one of the mouldering sponge-stone grottoes hollowed in the walls of the lower terrace. Vainly Chelifer protested that he loathed writing or reading out of doors.
“These lovely surroundings,” Mrs. Aldwinkle insisted, “will inspire you.”
“But the only surroundings that really inspire me,” said Chelifer, “are the lower middle class quarters of London, north of the Harrow Road, for example.”
“How can you say such things?” said Mrs. Aldwinkle.
“But I assure you,” he protested, “it’s quite true.”