"For a wonder I couldn't sleep last night," said Lesley, "and I thought an early spin in the car would clear my brain of cobwebs. I hope you don't mind being routed out at an unearthly hour."
Loveland would have liked to answer that it was unearthly only because it gave him the companionship of a being divine. But chauffeurs, even gentlemen chauffeurs, do not make such remarks to their employers, still less to the fiancées of their employers. He merely said, therefore, that he was sorry to hear Miss Dearmer had not slept, and was pleased to take her out at any hour. "Uncle Wally told me," he added, "that you'd been writing late last night."
"Not exactly writing," explained Lesley, finishing the chiffon bow under her chin with dainty elaboration. "I was looking over an act of a new play which Sidney has begun. Perhaps that excited me. Anyway, I tossed for hours thinking of a thousand things, when I might better have been dreaming. And then I was waked at seven by a telegram, and couldn't sleep again."
Something in her eyes, gleaming like fairy jewels under an enchanted lake, as they shone through the filmy veil, made Val miserably sure that Cremer had sent the telegram.
But he was becoming (outwardly) quite a well-trained servant, and only under the greatest provocation could he be goaded into asking impertinent questions.
"Shall I drive this morning, Miss Dearmer, or will you?" he enquired, trying to erase all expression from his face.
"Perhaps you'd better, at first. I'm almost too nervous," she said. "Bye and bye, we shall see."
She let him help her into the car, and even the touch of a thick, knitted mitten was electric for Loveland. Then he took the chauffeur's seat by her side, and sent the Gloria spinning down the avenue towards the gate.
"You've heard nothing from your people yet?" asked Lesley, after a few minutes' silence, while they flew along a road smooth as if it had been made for generations.
"Not yet," replied Val. "But I daresay something will be forwarded from Bonnerstown theatre in a day or two. I told you I'd written to the manager there, giving this address, for Bill would have sent on to Bonnerstown anything that came for me to his care in New York."