"Yes. You see I've been thinking a good deal of what you said the other night, but of course one can't throw over old friends without good cause—merely for marital infelicity—there are always two sides to those stories, you know. I was wondering if there was anything else—anything about him which you knew and I wouldn't be likely to— I've sometimes thought—that perhaps——" she paused and looked inquiringly at him.
The Secretary longed to tell her the truth; but remembering his Chief's instructions, and chastened by his late reverse, hardened his heart.
"As for that," he replied guardedly, "he doesn't bear an altogether savoury reputation, I've understood, but as my personal knowledge of his affairs dated with his wife's visit to me two or three days ago—my information is comparatively recent."
She smiled contentedly, and changed the subject, by suggesting that they should get out and walk. A long hill was before them, and since from the construction of governess carts the tendency of an up-grade is to put all the weight at the rear, it seemed advisable to descend.
"To give the pony a fighting chance," as the Secretary suggested.
Miss Fitzgerald complained that it was hot, and, barring the fact of cruelty to animals, a nuisance to have to climb the hill; saying which, she took off her hat, giving an unobstructed view of her hair.
If there is any excuse for the fact that the Secretary forgot his good resolutions, it must lie in the heart of the reader, who perhaps has been young some time himself, and had the exquisite pleasure of driving during a long, perfect English afternoon, through glorious wooded lanes, and all the picturesque antiquity which England alone knows, with a winsome Irish girl, with a peaches-and-cream complexion, a ravishing laugh, bewitching blue eyes, and golden hair loose upon her shoulders, which a madcap wind whipped in his face.
"I think it's glorious," said Stanley, reverting to the landscape, a little later, when the conversation had turned to less serious topics, "There's no country like England—but it's comparable to the little girl of the nursery rhyme—
"When it is good, it is very very good,
And when it is bad, it is horrid."
"I'm glad to see you appreciate it at its true worth. Isn't this scene perfect—but think of it in a November fog," she said.