"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."
She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registered and accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth, almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found a clue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.
"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.
Then she became aware of her father.
"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously. "It's all quite—quite—quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn't let yourself——"
She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassure her, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinct to conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kenneth had just said.
"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.
"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.
"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, as you call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't like you to—to tell foolish stories like that."
"But why——"