The doctor did not take the injunction literally. He knew the long, straight feature, slightly flattened, with small, insensitive nostrils. He had seen it on Lady Aviolet’s own face, on those of both her sons, and on the faces of almost all the Grierson-Amberlys living on the other side of the county.
“Poor little Cecil isn’t in the least like the Aviolets; though,” she added, with an obvious desire to be just, “he is a good-looking child, I must say.”
“Very,” said the doctor emphatically.
He had taken a curious fancy to the intelligent, mischievous-looking little boy, and he was already keenly interested in the perverseness of imagination that so greatly distressed Cecil’s grandmother. Abnormalities in psychology were, to the doctor’s way of thinking, better worth studying than the majority of the books regarded with so unsympathetic an eye by Lady Aviolet.
Sir Thomas passed through the hall, a tall, broadly-built, elderly man, with a heavy jowl and expressionless eyes.
“Good-morning, doctor. East wind again to-day.”
“Good-morning. Yes, spring’s late in coming this year. Well, I must be off.”
The doctor made his farewells, aware that the presence of her husband would put an immediate end to the inarticulate confidences of Lady Aviolet.
Driving down the avenue, however, he was overtaken by a slim, tweed-clad figure advancing through the beech-glades.
“Hullo, Lucian! Which way are you going?”