"Why not?" demanded Captain Holiday, with his abruptness.
"How could I ask her if she didn't choose to tell me?" Colonel Fielding answered very gently.
Here I thought there had been enough of this hair-splitting; besides, I couldn't bear to see Elizabeth's afternoon being spoilt.
So, bluntly and directly, I blurted out:
"But, Colonel Fielding, wasn't it you that this woman was having lunch with when she said that?"
"I?" He opened his eyes at me just as Muriel might have done, and I thought exasperatedly what a lot of girl's tricks he had. Still, one girl adored him for them. I saw poor Elizabeth sitting there doing it at that moment.
"I?" he said. "Oh, no. I—er—wasn't there, that time. I wasn't—the fact is I wasn't born. My mother only told me about it lately."
Elizabeth stopped pulling up the stubble with a jerk, and at the same moment I said sharply, "Your mother—but what's your mother got to do with it, Colonel Fielding?"
"She was the woman who had lunch," explained the young man simply. "She—er—is the woman who's taught me most things, I think. I always think men might learn more from their mothers than any other woman allows 'em to—er—know. 'You'll get a sweetheart any day, but not anothah mothah!' D'you know that song, Miss Weare?"
Villain! He had simply been "trying it on," "playing up"! He was quite "up" to the fact of Elizabeth's jealousy. And now he was equally "up" to the look of exquisite relief that was lighting her up again—just as it had done when she found she was not to go away after all.