She was almost completely silent, and as for him, his responses to the general conversation which McVay kept attempting to set up, were so entirely mechanical that he was scarcely aware of them himself.
It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day.
“And this is our Christmas dinner,” observed McVay regretfully.
“Oh, no,” returned the girl, “this is luncheon. I’ll cook your dinner. You’ll see.”
There was a pause. Geoffrey looked at McVay. The moment for disillusioning her had manifestly come. Wherever they might next meet it would not be at his dinner table. A hateful vision of a criminal court rose before him.
“Miss McVay,” he said gravely, indifferent to the signals of warning which the other man was directing toward him; “we shall not be here at dinner. Your brother will tell you my reasons for wishing to start down the mountain.”
“Now?”
“At once.”
She coloured slowly and deeply,—the only evidence of anger. “I do not need any other reason than your wish that we should go,” she said, rising. “I should thank you for having borne with us so long.”
“Upon my word, Holland, it is madness to start as late as this,” said McVay. “It will be dark in an hour.”