Lord Vinson looks rather aggrieved at being cut so short, but goes on good-temperedly enough.
"She spotted me at once, and the first question she asked was, had I seen you?"
"Well?" demands Yorke, as curtly as before.
"Well, I didn't know what to say for the moment, because I thought perhaps you wouldn't care for her to know."
A faint expression of relief flits across Yorke's face, but it disappears at Vinson's next words.
"She saw me hesitate, and of course knew that I had seen you. 'It's no use your playing it low down on me, my dear boy,' she said, laughing—you know her way. 'You couldn't deceive a two-months-old calf, if you tried. You've seen him, and he's here somewhere.' It was no use trying to deceive her, as she said, and I had to own up that I had seen you this morning, and—that you borrowed my rig."
Yorke bit his lip, and nodded impatiently.
"She took it very well, she did indeed. She only laughed and said that she knew you had left town for some fishing; and, being sick of London herself, she had sent a certificate to say she was down with low or high, or some kind of fever, I forget which, and had to run down here for a bit of a holiday with her brother—or her uncle, I don't know which it is."
Yorke looks round with ill-concealed anxiety.
"Oh, it's all right," says Lord Vinson; "they've gone on to the inn. I came back for my stick. There it is. Well, I thought the best thing I could do was to ask them to come for a sail, and it took her ladyship's fancy, and here we are, don't you know."