"Is he going to continue being with you, then?" asked Geoffrey.
"Certainly; as much as he will. Evie and I settled all that without any disagreement, thank you. He is also thinking of having a little ventre à terre, as somebody said, in town, a sort of little independence of his own. I am delighted that he will; six months ago he couldn't bear the thought of going about among people again, but now it is all changed: he will begin to live again, after all these years. Dear old fellow, what a good friend he has been to me! Fancy caring about people of twenty or so, when you are over seventy. What wonderful vitality!"
Whatever shadow of approaching cloud, so thought Geoffrey, might darken Lady Oxted's view of the future, it was clear that to Harry there could not have been a more serene horizon. Since that first afternoon down at Oxted he had not exchanged a further word with her or any one else on the subject, and by degrees that ghastly conversation had grown gradually fainter in his mind, and it was to him now more of the texture of a remembered nightmare than an actual experience. For several days afterward, it is true, it had remained very unpleasantly vivid to him; she had been so ingenious in her presentation of undeniable facts that at the time, and perhaps for a fortnight afterward, it had nearly seemed to him that Mr. Francis had been plotting with diabolical ingenuity against this match. If such were the case, his apparent delight at it assumed an aspect infinitely grave and portentous; his smiles would have been creditable to a fiend. But as the sharper edge of memory grew dulled, these thoughts, which had never been quite sufficiently solid to be called sober suspicions, became gradually nebulous again. Two circumstances had been the foundation of Lady Oxted's theory, each separately capable of explanation, and in making a judgment so serious it was the acme of unfairness, so it seemed to him now, to put the two together and judge. Each must be weighed and considered on its separate merits, and if neither had weight alone, then neither had weight together. There had been darker insinuations to follow; at these Geoffrey now laughed, so baseless appeared their fabric. Dr. Armytage might or might not be a reputable man, but the idea of connecting his visit to Vail, when one remembered how long he had known Mr. Francis, with something sinister and unspoken with regard to Harry, was really a triumph for the diseased imagination which is one of the sequelæ of influenza.
Oddly enough, as if by thought transference, Harry's next words bore some relation to this train of ideas which had been passing through Geoffrey's mind.
"Do you remember that evening when we went to find Dr. Godfrey, Geoff?" he said. "Well, I have so often thought about it since that I have determined to tell Uncle Francis about it, and ask him to explain it all."
This appeared an excellent plan to Geoffrey, for, little as he believed in the solidity of Lady Oxted's bubbles of imagination, it would still be a good thing to have them pricked.
"Do," he said. "Ask him some time when I am there. I should like to see his face when his little ruse is exposed. It might be a useful lesson. Personally, I never know how to look when my little ruses are discovered."
Harry laughed.