"Very proud," answered Loveland.
"And do you think I should be able to get on without much more teaching from a real expert?"
"Oh, yes. With a decent sort of chauffeur to do your repairs, you can drive the car through country like this, without danger——"
"Unless I get absent-minded."
"Yes, unless you get absent-minded. But why should you be absent-minded, when so soon you'll have the person you care for most sitting beside you, where I sit now? Oh, I ought to beg your pardon for saying such things, Miss Dearmer. But you see, you and I were once friends, not employer and servant, so I forget myself sometimes. And besides, I can't help thinking this morning that you're leading up to saying something which perhaps you find it a little difficult to say. Yet, why should it be difficult for you to tell me if you've heard that Mr. Cremer's coming at once and bringing another chauffeur."
"My telegram didn't say that, but it made me feel that I shan't be able to keep you very long at the Hill Farm," said Lesley.
Gone was the elaborate scheme for staying on at any cost! She wanted him to go. She was hinting for him to go.
"I can leave whenever you like to get rid of me," returned Val, his tone roughened, made almost brutal by his effort to hide the sharp pain he suffered.
"Oh, don't think I feel like that!" exclaimed Lesley, eagerly—so eagerly that in her excitement she did the very thing she had reproached Loveland for doing. She forgot that a person controlling a powerful motor-car is ill advised to be in earnest about anything except the business in hand.
They were approaching a somewhat abrupt turn in the road at the moment Lesley chose to assure Loveland that she didn't mean to hurt his feelings. Being genuinely sorry for the effect her words produced, she did not realise until too late that the corner would expect her to slow down before turning it. Had she been an experienced driver, the right action would have been mechanical; but as it was, she discovered with a quick rush of blood to her heart that she could not check the speed in time. She tried to make up for her mistake by a feat of accurate steering, but the task was beyond her powers. The big Gloria swung round the curve on two wheels, refused to take the new direction, and bounded gaily off the road, across a ditch and into a meadow.