“Who the devil is this?”
The girl started from her day-dream, and turned quickly. In the doorway behind her stood her father, a pair of binoculars in his hand. Then she looked in the direction in which under the circumstance she naturally would look.
Away, where the road topped the ridge, two horsemen were riding; and they were approaching the house. They might have been merely passers-by certainly, but the girl’s true instinct informed her that it was not so, and her heart beats quickened. Yet—why two?
“One of ’em’s Warren,” pronounced Le Sage, with the glasses at his eyes. “And the other—why, damn it! it’s—it’s that fellow, Wyvern.”
This staccato. Lalanté, rising, saw that her father’s face had paled, and the hands that held the binoculars shook.
“Now, dear,” she adjured, putting a hand round his shoulder. “Don’t lose yourself, and remember he may have some particular object in wanting to see you. He has never been here since, and it’s quite possible that he has. Now do receive him with common civility. You must, you know. You can’t be offensive to a man on your own doorstep. Now can you?”
“Oh, can’t I? I seem to remember telling this one never to come near my ‘own doorstep’ again,” snorted Le Sage.
“Never mind. Wait till you hear what he has got to say. You will, won’t you.”
By this time she had got both arms round his neck, and was holding it tight. He looked into her luminous eyes with his own sombre and angry ones, and somehow the anger seemed to die.
“Very well, dear,” he said with an effort, though more gently, and loosening her hold. “I’ll wait and see.”