Lady Teignmouth laughed a nervous, tuneless laugh.
“Don’t be absurd, Gwen! We should have been sure to hear if anything had been the matter.”
“Of course. I am very foolish to frighten myself so easily; but I am tired and nervous, I suppose. I wish Lady Lenox wouldn’t make me stay so long. I have tried to slip away half a dozen times at least, and she has caught me and carried me back. It is a great mistake, to my mind, to bring town habits and town hours into the country, where we are nothing if we are not rural.”
She yawned demonstratively as she spoke, and appeared to have forgotten Colonel Dacre’s very existence, until he reminded her of it by saying formally:
“Perhaps your ladyship will allow me to accompany you as far as Turoy? I am sorry to annoy you by persisting, but I must speak with you privately—for your own sake.”
“Oh, you horrible man!” exclaimed Lady Teignmouth, with playful impertinence. “You are always full of mysteries! When I last saw you at Teignmouth you had something very important and very secret to say to Gwen, you know.”
He colored resentfully, remembering how she had sent him to Turoy to meet the greatest sorrow of his life. Of course she could not know how tragically and painfully he was to be cured of his infatuation; but she certainly guessed that he would meet a successful rival at the Grange, and had taken a malicious pleasure in his discomfiture. He answered coldly:
“I don’t know why your ladyship should infer that what I had to say to Lady Gwendolyn the other day was at all secret or mysterious. I certainly gave you no grounds for such a belief.”
“You forget that women do not always need to be told things, Colonel Dacre.”
“They have no right to make sure of anything they have not been told,” he said shortly.