And not Norah alone, as it appeared at dinner. Little Violet Dufaure, whose appealing ways were notoriously successful with the emotionally weaker sex, took her seat at table with a demurely triumphant air. Captain Irons reproached her, with polite gallantry, for having deserted the croquet lawn after tea.
“Oh, I went for a walk to Fillby—through Scarsmoor, you know.”
“Through Scarsmoor, Violet?” The Marchesa sounded rather startled again.
“It’s a public road, you know, Helena. Isn’t it, Mr Stillford?”
Stillford admitted that it was. “All the same, perhaps the less we go there at the present moment——”
“Oh, but Lord Lynborough asked me to come again and to go wherever I liked—not to keep to the stupid road.”
Absolute silence reigned. Violet looked round with a smile which conveyed a general appeal for sympathy; there was, perhaps, special reference to Miss Gilletson as the guardian of propriety, and to the Marchesa as the owner of the disputed path.
“You see, I took Nellie, and the dear always does run away. She ran after a rabbit. I ran after her, of course. The rabbit ran into a hole, and I ran into Lord Lynborough. Helena, he’s charming!”
“I’m thoroughly tired of Lord Lynborough,” said the Marchesa icily.
“He must have known I was staying with you, I think; but he never so much as mentioned you. He just ignored you—the whole thing, I mean. Wasn’t it tactful?”