‘One or two things, I know, want explaining.’ A wave of Miss Bartrand’s hand signalled to Geoffrey to take a chair. Then she seated herself opposite him, the rosy western afterglow falling directly on her clear, truth-telling face.
‘You thought my advertisement bizarre, did you not?’
‘On the contrary, I thought it sensible and to the point.’
Geff’s answer was given with stiff courtesy.
‘But too independent; for I had never consulted my grandfather, understand! I never spoke to the Seigneur till an hour ago, about my having a coach. Tell me, you don’t think the worse of me for this?’
Had he fallen asleep, lying among the blue-leaved campanulas on the moor with the waving sedges at hand, with the falcon soaring high overhead; was this drawing-room, with its mirrors and rose-scents and Cupids, a dream? Could it be possible that Marjorie Bartrand, the heiress, who never bestowed a civil word upon any man, should plead, in sober reality, for his, Geff Arbuthnot’s, good opinion?
‘I am obliged to think and act for myself. There is my defence. My grandfather, whom you will see presently, is clever—oh, cleverer than any man in Guernsey, perhaps in Spain! Mathematics, classics—you even could name no branch of learning, Mr. Arbuthnot, that grandpapa has not.’
‘Of that I am sure, Miss Bartrand.’
‘He was known in Oxford sixty years ago. The revolution so disgusted my great-grandfather with everything French that he turned Protestant out of revenge. A mean action—say?’
‘That depends upon the manner of conversion.’