She rang the bell, told the maid that dinner was wanted at once, and a few minutes after they were seated in the dining-room. The soup was hardly finished before there was a bustle in the hall and the tapping of a stick along the beeswaxed floor. Major Urquhart put a rather dishevelled head inside the door.
"That confounded boat sprung a leak; and the young fool—Harding's eldest—brought me a conger eel; said there was nothing else. Don't wait for me. I shan't be a second."
The Admiral muttered something under his breath. He was a hale hearty-looking man, clean-shaven, and with the same well cut features as his daughter, only more pronounced. Randolph found him a keen politician, and interested in every subject that was touched upon.
"I get most of my information from printers' ink," he said with a short laugh. "I haven't been to town for five years, and it's precious few of my own sex that come down my way; but Sidney and I are book-lovers, and there's not much that we don't thrash out together."
He glanced across the table at his daughter with a certain amount of quiet pride in his eyes. When Major Urquhart appeared, his niece chaffed him unmercifully. Her spirits never flagged, and the dinner, in spite of the absent fish, was a great success.
When Randolph eventually joined the ladies, he found them pacing up and down the terrace outside the house.
Sidney turned to him at once.
"Well, Mr. Neville, how long will our quiet country satisfy you? Are you a fisherman? Do you like sailing? Because there is nothing else for your entertainment. I have seen a few men—very few—endure a fortnight in this part, but never longer."
"You want to drive me away," Randolph said lightly; "but I assure you I have learnt to be independent of my environment."
"Now, that's a nasty one, isn't it, Monnie? He is all in all to himself, and we count for nothing. Like old Bob the shepherd in our village. He has got pensioned off and been given an almshouse. I went to see him the other day, and pitied him for the loss of his occupation. 'Bless 'ee, miss, 'tis no' to be pitied I am. All my life I have had to think an' mix wi' crowds o' creeturs, an' now I can do very well to myself. No such good company as oneself arter all, but one hasn't a chance commonly o' finding it out.'"