Harry left London at the end of the month, paid a couple of visits in England, then went to Scotland for the remainder of August, and loitered there, since he was at the same two houses as Evie till September had reached its second decade of days, and then travelled south again with her. She was on her way straight to Santa Margarita to spend the remainder of the month of months with her mother, and Harry saw her off by the boat express from Victoria, she having sternly and absolutely refused to let him do anything so foolish as to travel to Dover with her.
"You would propose coming to Calais next," she said, "and Calais is but a step to Paris. I know you, Harry. And—and how I hate the journey, and how I should love it if you were with me!"
"Oh, let me come!" said he.
"Not even to Herne Hill," and the train slid out of the vaulted gloom of the station.
Geoffrey joined him late on the same day, and next afternoon they set off together down to Vail. Stock brokering, it appeared, was like pheasants, quite impossible in September, and he was going to spend the remainder of the month with Harry, unless some unforeseen urgency called him back. This, he considered, was not in the least degree likely to happen, for the unforeseen so seldom occurs.
"The house is all upside down, Geoff," said Harry to him as they drove from the station; "and all the time which you do not employ in getting severe electric shocks over unprotected wires, you will probably spend in falling into hot and cold water alternately upstairs. The housemaids' closets seem to me just now the only really important thing in England. I thought it better not to tell you all this before we started, for fear of your not coming."
"Oh, I can always go back," said Geoffrey. "Is Mr. Francis there?"
"Just now he is, but he is going away in a few days," said Harry. "In fact, he is only waiting till I come, to put the unprotected wires into my hands."
"Is he well?"
"Yes, extraordinarily well, and he asked after you in his last letter to me. Also he seems wonderfully happy at the thought of my marriage. So we are both pleased. Well, I'm sure I don't wonder; it will be a sort of death blow to that tragedy twenty years old and more now, a sort of seal and attestation of the vileness of the suspicion. Besides, you know, it's pretty nice for any one to have Evie in the house always."