"I'm glad," said Sir Julian.
Walking back alone to Culmhayes, he wondered whether he had spoken the truth.
His gladness, at all events, was considerably modified by the recollection of that odd flash of illumination which had come to him.
"It is no business of mine," Julian told himself, shrugging his shoulders with a timely recollection of his favourite bugbear, officiousness. And all through the solitary evening, and his exceeding appreciation of such solitude, he thought about the business which was none of his.
IX
Perhaps the closest bond of union between Julian Rossiter and his wife now consisted in the common dismay which invaded them when Ruthie and Ambrose Easter thought fit to inflict themselves, uninvited, upon the Culmhayes establishment.
On the morning after Edna's return from London, she was writing in the morning-room, when a respectfully resentful servant informed her that Miss Ruthie and Master Ambrose were at the front door, declaring an urgent necessity for seeing Lady Rossiter.
"Tell them I am busy writing," said Edna hastily, certainly not pausing for the application of her favourite, "Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?" since it was neither the first nor the last, and eventually turned out to be far from compliant with even the second regulation, since the visitors, accepting Horber's rebuff with deceptive quiet, immediately made their way round to the window of the morning-room, where they startled Lady Rossiter considerably by suddenly appearing, with flattened noses and glaring eyeballs, against the pane.
She made imperious signs at them with an ivory penholder, without avail. Unable to contemplate the prospect of pursuing her morning avocations under the mouthing pantomime by which Ruthie sought to convey her desire for immediate admission, Lady Rossiter flung open the window, shivering at the rush of the raw morning cold.
"Good morning, children," she said forbearingly.