“Are you not astonished to see us back so soon?” she said. “You know how eagerly I grasp at any excuse for a return to the country. Through all the clash and sparkle of town I hear the birds singing and see the lambs frisking in the meadows.”
“They’re not so much as dropped in January,” said Dunlone seriously.
Miss Angela blushed.
“Mr. Tuke will understand me,” she said, with a plaintive glance at that gentleman.
He coughed and bowed, and was altogether wholly perplexed as to the nature of her present attitude towards him.
“And what was the excuse you grasped at?” said he.
She made a little moue with her lips—she was amazingly confidential—and shrugged her pretty shoulders at the oblivious viscount.
“He was returning to Cornwall,” she whispered, “and almost drove us home that he might make a half-way house of ‘Chatters.’ I vow we were forced to come.”
She was delightfully secretive. There was no mention of my lord’s tailor. Almost Tuke misdoubted that Dunlone had kept his aristocratic faith with him.
“Well,” said he, “we’re all beholden to him anyhow, whatever was his motive.”