"I wish you were coming with me, Reggie," said Gertrude. "We're going to Lucerne in a month from now, when mother has had her course. That will be towards the end of June. Do come. It is an awfully nice place, and you can go up mountains—or row if you like. Will you?"
Reggie thought it a brilliant and feasible idea.
"I don't care a bit about London," he said, "and I do happen to care about you. It will be lovely. Write to me just before you go there, and tell me the hotel, and so on. Of course, I'll come. Ah! good-bye, Gerty."
The train moved slowly out of the station, and Reggie was left standing on the platform, waiting for it to curl away into the dark arch which soon swallowed it up. He had lost a great deal, and he went home somewhat silently.
That evening there was a great reception at one of the Foreign Embassies. Mrs. Davenport was the sister of the Ambassador's wife, and, after dinner, she asked whether anybody was going with her. Her husband eschewed such festivities; like a sensible man, he preferred, he said, to sit quietly at home, than to stand wedged in among a crowd of people who didn't care whether they saw him or not, and fight his way into a stuffy drawing-room. Reggie was sitting in the window, which he had thrown wide open, and was reading The Field. He had written a short note to Gertrude because he missed her, and as her bodily presence was not there, he felt it was something to communicate with her, but letter-writing was a difficulty to him, and the note had been very short.
An idea seemed to strike Mrs. Davenport when she saw him.
"Reggie, why don't you come?"
"I'll come if you like. Will it be amusing? Yes; I should like to come. Let me smoke in the carriage, mummy."
The two went downstairs together, and got into the carriage.
"Poor old boy," said Mrs. Davenport, laying her hand on his, "you will feel rather lonely to-night. I thought you'd like to come."