“Well, Mr Orlebar, I am glad to see you down at last,” said a very pleasing feminine voice, whose owner suddenly appeared round an angle of the house.
“You’re awfully good, Mrs Daventer,” he replied. “But if you’re only half as glad to see me down as I am to be down, why then you’re—you’re—er—still more good.”
“It must be delightful to feel yourself out of doors again, after being shut up all that time,” she went on. “Still, it won’t do to hurry matters. You must make up your mind to have a little patience.”
“Just what I’m doing. Job isn’t in it with me for that quality.”
She laughed—and a very attractive laugh it was. So Phil thought, and he reckoned himself a judge. “A devilish nice woman, and a devilish nice-looking one,” had been his verdict to Fordham, and he saw no reason to retract any part of it now.
“I shouldn’t give you credit for much of the quality at any rate,” she said. “You seem far too impulsive. For instance, just now you were looking anything but philosophical. However, it is slow work being a prisoner, and a lonely prisoner too. What has become of your friend?”
“Who? Fordham? Oh, he’s away for a few days. He and Wentworth have gone over to Chamounix by the glacier route. I miss the chap no end. I believe he’d have put it off if I had wanted him to, but, as it is, I’ve been feeling a selfish dog keeping him in the best part of the day yarning to me, when he might have been having a high old time on his own account. I tell you what it is, Mrs Daventer, he’s a rare good chap is Fordham.”
This was amusing—rich, in fact. She did not even turn away her head to conceal a bitter curl of the lips, for she flattered herself she was past showing the faintest sign of feeling. But a ruling passion is difficult to conceal entirely, especially when it consists of a surging, deadly hatred.
“Is he?” she said vacantly.
“Rather. I see you don’t believe it though. But, between ourselves, he is a good bit of a woman-hater. So I suppose the sex instinctively reciprocates the compliment. But, I say, Mrs Daventer. It was awfully good of you to come and see me as you did—and the other people too,” added Phil, in the half-shamefaced way in which nineteen men out of twenty are wont to express their thanks or appreciation as regards a kindness rendered.