"I should be very hurt if you didn't. It's going to be rather nice."
"It is," I said with conviction.
"I meant the season. I'll enjoy it all. The dances and theatres, Ranelagh, Ascot, Lord's, the Horse Show and everything. But—"
"How glad and happy she'll be to get back to the Abbey with its deep woodland and its warm park, its gentle-eyed deer, its oaks and elms and cedars, its rose-garden and its old paved court. How grateful to lean out of her bedroom window into the cool, quiet, starlit nights. How pleased to watch the setting sun making the ragged clerestory more beautiful than did all its precious panes."
I stopped. She was sitting back in her chair by the window, chin in air, showing her soft, white throat, gazing with half-closed eyes up at the reddening sky.
"He understands," she murmured, "he understands."
For a little space we sat silent. Then I rose.
"Good-bye." I said. "You have been very kind. Perhaps I may come again."
She did not move. Only her eyes left the window and rested on mine. "Ring the bell," she said. "I am going to take you to see the ruins. They are at their best, as you said, at sundown."
"Thank you," I said, and stepped to the fireplace. A footman entered the room. "I want the key of the Abbot's kitchen," said my hostess.