“But the hallowed associations—the picturesqueness!” continued Mrs. Kirkby, with languid interest.
“The associations wouldn't be anything except to the family, you know; and I should fancy they wouldn't be either hallowed or pleasant. As for picturesqueness, the ruins are beastly ugly; weather-beaten instead of being mellowed by time, you know, and bare where they ought to be hidden by vines and moss. I can't make out why anybody sent you there, for you Americans are rather particular about your sightseeing.”
“We heard of them through a friend,” said the consul, with assumed carelessness. “Perhaps it's as good an excuse as any for a pleasant journey.”
“And very likely your friend mistook it for something else, or was himself imposed upon,” said the Englishman politely. “But you might not think it so, and, after all,” he added thoughtfully, “it's years since I've seen it. I only meant that I could show you something better a few miles from my place in Gloucestershire, and not quite so far from a railway as this. If,” he added with a pleasant deliberation which was the real courtesy of his conventionally worded speech, “you ever happened at any time to be anywhere near Audrey Edge, and would look me up, I should be glad to show it to you and your friends.” An hour later, when he left them at a railway station where their paths diverged, Miss Elsie recovered a fluency that she had lately checked. “Well, I like that! He never told us his name, or offered a card. I wonder if they call that an invitation over here. Does he suppose anybody's going to look up his old Audrey Edge—perhaps it's named after his wife—to find out who HE is? He might have been civil enough to have left his name, if he—meant anything.”
“But I assure you he was perfectly sincere, and meant an invitation,” returned the consul smilingly. “Audrey Edge is evidently a well-known place, and he a man of some position. That is why he didn't specify either.”
“Well, you won't catch me going there,” said Miss Elsie.
“You would be quite right in either going or staying away,” said the consul simply.
Miss Elsie tossed her head slightly. Nevertheless, before they left the station, she informed him that she had been told that the station-master had addressed the stranger as “my lord,” and that another passenger had said he was “Lord Duncaster.”
“And that proves”—
“That I'm right,” said the young lady decisively, “and that his invitation was a mere form.”