"May I—?" Lawrence took out his cigarettes. Isabel gave a grudging assent. She could not understand how any one could be willing to taint the sweet summering air that had blown over so many leagues of grass and flowers. "Dare I offer you one?" Lawrence asked, tendering his case. It was of gold, and bore his monogram in diamonds. Isabel eyed it scornfully. Jack Bendish's was only silver and much scratched and dinted into the bargain. Now Jack Bendish was the grandson of a duke.
"'No thank you," said Miss Stafford. "I detest smoking."
To this Lawrence made no reply at all, no doubt, thought Isabel, because he did not consider it worth one. She was proportionally surprised and a trifle flattered when he replaced the cigarette to which he had just helped himself. "'The young girl had not realized her own power. She was only just coming into her woman's kingdom. Her heart beat faster and a vermilion blush dyed her pale cheek."' Isabel's favourite authors were Stevenson and Mr. Kipling, but her mental rubric insisted on clothing itself in the softer style of Molly Bawn.
"I don't detest other people's smoking," she explained in a rather penitent tone.
"Let's get out on the downs," said Lawrence. He swung the gate to and fro for her, then took off his hat and strolled slowly by her side through the rustling grass. "Really," he said, more to himself than to her, "there are places in England that are very well worth while."
"Worth while what?"
"Er—worth coming to see. I suppose there isn't much shooting to be had except rabbits." He swung an imaginary gun to his shoulder and sighted it at a quarry which seemed to Isabel to be equally imaginary. "See him? Under that heap of stones left of the beech ring." Isabel's vision was both keen and practised, but she saw nothing till the rabbit showed his white scut in a flickering leap to earth.
"You have jolly good eyes," she conceded, still rather grudgingly.
"So have bunnies, unluckily. Major Clowes tells me there's pretty good shooting over Wanhope. I suppose your brother looks after it, for of course Clowes can do nothing. It was a great stroke of luck for my cousin, getting hold of a fellow like Val."
"I don't know about that. It was a great stroke of luck for
Val."