"It's an awful nuisance having anything on your mind, isn't it, mother?" he says, genially.
"It is indeed, my dear," with heartfelt earnestness and a palpable expectation of worse things yet to come. "What unfortunate mistake have you been making now?"
"Not one. 'You wrong me, Brutus.' I have been as gently behaved as a skipping lamb all the morning. No; I mean having to fetch our visitor this evening weighs upon my spirits and somehow idles me. I can settle to nothing."
"You seldom can, dear, can you?" says Lady Chetwoode, mildly, with unmeant irony. "But"—as though suddenly inspired—"suppose you go for a walk?"
This is a mean suggestion, and utterly unworthy of Lady Chetwoode. The fact is, the day is warm and she is sleepy, and she knows she will not get her forty winks unless he takes himself out of the way. So, with a view to getting rid of him, she grows hypocritically kind.
"A walk will do you good," she says. "You don't take half exercise enough. And, you know, the want of it makes people fat."
"I believe you are right," Cyril says, rising. He stretches himself, laughs indolently at his own lazy figure in an opposite mirror, after which he vanishes almost as quickly as even she can desire.
Five minutes later, with an open book upon her knee, as a means of defense should any one enter unannounced, Lady Chetwoode is snoozing comfortably; while Cyril, following the exact direction taken by the crow in the morning, walks leisurely onward, under the trees, to meet his fate!
Quite unthinkingly, quite unsuspiciously, he pursues his way, dreaming of anything in the world but The Cottage and its new inmate, until the house, suddenly appearing before him, recalls his wandering thoughts.
The hall-door stands open. Every one of the windows is thrown wide. There is about everything the unmistakable silent noise that belongs to an inhabited dwelling, however quiet. The young man, standing still, wonders vaguely at the change.