CHAPTER III.
“Stuart, where are you going?”
The question was put in a cold, sharp voice, and came from a lady sitting at her writing-desk in a spacious window-recess overlooking extensive grounds. She was a handsome woman, with rather massive features and a profusion of dark-brown hair artistically arranged. Her eyes, of a light green-gray shade, were fixed at this moment on a young man standing in an easy, graceful attitude outside the French window.
“Going, mother?” he responded. “Nowhere in particular. Do you want me?”
Mrs. Crosbie examined her firm white hands for one brief second.
“Have you forgotten what to-day is?” she asked, quietly.
The young man pondered, puckered his handsome brows, and pretended to be lost in doubt.
“I really forget,” he answered, after a while, looking up with a mischievous twinkle in his brown eyes. “Thursday, I believe; but you have your almanac close to your hand, mother.”
“This is Thursday, the twenty-second of July, Stuart,” observed Mrs. Crosbie, putting down her pen and looking fixedly at her son. “And this afternoon your Aunt Clara and Cousin Vane will arrive, and you are expected to meet them at Chesterham station.”
“By Jove,” exclaimed Stuart, with a soft whistle, “I had clean forgotten them!” He pushed his hands into his tennis-coat pockets and regarded his shoes with almost a real pucker on his brow. “What time are they due?” he asked, after a brief silence.