“No, dear, you don’t know it yet,” said she. “You’ve only heard it, that’s a very different thing. My son Philip never knew: he only heard——”
Colin intervened.
“Now, Granny, eat your soup,” he said, “or we shall never get through dinner. Tell us about it afterwards.”
He looked up at Dennis, just one passing glance, and saw that the boy’s attention was violently arrested.
“And does Mr. Douglas know?” asked Dennis, “Is that what you wanted to whisper about? Father, what is it that you know and I’ve only heard?”
It was odd how the atmosphere was suddenly charged with impalpable tension. Lady Yardley alone, whatever she said, could not have produced it; it required Dennis and his innocent boyish inquisitiveness at the other end.
Violet interrupted. Dennis mustn’t ask, Dennis mustn’t know.
“Dennis dear, you saw Aunt Hester to-day, didn’t you?” she said. “Didn’t she send any message to me?”
Dennis’s whole mind was fixed on this other puzzling matter. But at his mother’s voice he seemed to detach himself.
“Yes: her love,” he said. “And I’m going to write to her to-morrow—so’s Father: two letters, and a motor’s going up to London to take them to her. And it’ll bring her down here, we think.”