‘Is that remark made to me?’ he asked.
‘I suppose it is just a little bit. It was very impertinent.’
‘I do subscribe to it, you know,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes; I saw your name among the subscribers when I was there yesterday,’ she said rather hurriedly.
Keeling felt a keen and secret enjoyment over this. He knew quite well what she must have seen, namely the fact that he was a yearly subscriber of £10, as set forth on the subscription board. He had no temptation whatever to tell her who was the anonymous donor of the new wing. She would hear that to-morrow, and in the meantime would continue to consider him the donor of £10 a year. He liked that: he did not want any curtailment of it.
‘And no one knows who the giver of the new wing is?’ she asked.
‘I fancy Lord Inverbroom does,’ he replied, secretly praising himself for his remarkable ingenuity.
‘I enjoyed that afternoon I spent there,’ she said. ‘They are kind, they are simple, and it is only simple people who count. I wonder if Lord Inverbroom gave the wing himself.’
‘Ah, that had not occurred to me,’ said Keeling.
This served his purpose. Clearly no suspicion of being tricked by an ingenious answer crossed the girl’s mind, and she paused a moment shielding her eyes with her hand and looking towards Bracebridge. That shelter from the sun concealed all her face but her mouth, and looking at her he thought that if her mouth alone was visible of her, he could have picked it out as hers among a thousand others. The full upper lip was the slightest degree irregular; it drooped a little on the right, falling over the join with the lower lip: it was as if it was infinitesimally swollen there. For one second of stinging desire he longed to shut down her hand over her eyes, and kiss that corner of her mouth. It must have been that about which the skylark sang....