Lady Oxted dropped her white elephants on the carpet and sat down by Evie.
"Armytage?" she asked, and the fooling was gone from her voice.
"Right again. You had much better tell the whole story for yourself, hadn't you?"
"No; when other people begin to talk about the Luck, I take no part in the conversation," said she, "except, at least, when Geoffrey is here, and then I talk of bears and bulls."
The Harry who had played bayonet with the tongs had by this time vanished; vanished also were the flying skirts of farce, and in absolute silence on the part of his audience, and in gravity on his own, he told them the three adventures, narrating only the salient facts, and alluding neither directly nor otherwise to Geoffrey or his uncle. But while his tale was yet young, Evie crossed from the sofa where she had been sitting with Lady Oxted and joined Harry on the hearth rug. One hand held her fan, the other was on her lap. Of the latter Harry easily possessed himself, and the tale of the gun was told with it in his. But as he spoke of the raking gash that riddled the cornice and ceiling of the gun room, it was suddenly withdrawn and laid on his shoulder.
"O Harry, Harry!" she murmured.
He turned and stopped, spontaneously responsive.
"My darling," he said, "I ought never to have told you. Only I could not help telling you some time, and why not now? Was it not better to tell you like this, making no confidence of it?"
If ever a word ought to have carried the weight of a hint, the word was here. But Lady Oxted showed not the slightest sign of following her husband, or saying she must write two notes.
"Go on, Harry," she said. "We are waiting. So the gun went off?"