Their eyes met, and a delighted sense of recognition seemed to dance in both.
“I like the beginning part of it best, when the father is first arrested, and they go to the Czar. Do you remember?”
“Yes. And have you come to the part....”
They were as much excited as old friends meeting unexpectedly in a foreign country.
Ludovic remembered the book, which had absorbed him twenty years earlier, a good deal more clearly than he remembered the reviews which were now the objects of his monthly perusal.
They talked about “The Young Exiles” until the house was reached.
Lady Argent greeted them with smiles and kind, outstretched hand, but Ludovic felt convinced by the rather nervous cheeriness of her “Well, children dear, how do you like the garden?” that Mrs. Tregaskis had been impressing upon his mother the necessity for carrying off the situation with a high-handed brightness.
The brightness of Mrs. Tregaskis herself was beyond question.
“We heard you having a great pow-wow as you came along,” she said gaily. “What was it all about?”
She looked at Rosamund, but it was Frances who, after an instant’s pause, replied gently and gravely: