What was the use of spoiling Dennis’s last day, Colin asked himself. The boy would be gone to-morrow for the next twelve weeks, and then would be the time to rout out the intruder. Indeed, that uprooting should begin to-night, that change in himself, that recantation of his recent apostasy. At midnight, when Dennis had gone to bed, he would renew his vows, and partake in the mockery of Love itself.
“Dennis, don’t whirl round me like that,” he said. “You make me giddy. And it’s very grumpy of you, do you know, to be glad that your friends have gone? How many tipped you?”
“Oh, a frightful lot,” said Dennis. “I’m rolling in riches. Will you come and play golf? Or tennis, do you think? Or what about potting rabbits? Or don’t you want to be bothered with me?”
“We’ll do just what you like,” said Colin. “Sit down and make up your mind.”
“Oh, but it’s made up,” said the boy. “Golf first: we’ll drive over to Rye in the two-seater. I’ll drive.”
Colin paused a moment.
“You don’t want to look at the Memoirs then?” he asked. “I’ll read interesting bits to you, if you like.”
Dennis’s eyebrows drew themselves together. Some remembrance, was it, of his vanished fears?
“Oh, I’d sooner play golf,” he said.
All day the two were together, and at dinner, for Aunt Hester had gone back with the rest to London, there were just the four of them, at a small round table in the dining-room, which last night had resounded to the gaiety of fifty, and blazed with the costumes of Elizabeth. And yet all that was essentially Stanier was gathered undiluted there; the splendour and the sparkle of these last days had been no more than a casual decoration it had plucked for itself and worn a little while and thrown away again. Last night old Lady Yardley had sat up till the very end of the ball, and all the week she had attended whatever entertainment was provided, but these unusual hours seemed to have made no call on her strength, and now bright-eyed and somehow terribly alive, beneath that immobile alabastrine sheath of her body, she looked from Dennis to his father and back again, as if searching, searching for some assurance, some confirmation of what she desired. Of Violet, as usual, she seemed unconscious.