He was halfway up the stairs and had caught both her hands in his.
“Rosamund, darling!” The grip of her strong, slender hands answered his, but there was a sort of questioning sound in her exclamation.
“Dearest,” said Morris with gentle surprise, “you know I adore you, don’t you? Don’t you love me?”
Mrs. Tregaskis, entering the hall briskly, in spite of her long, hot walk, found them on the stairs, Morris holding Rosamund’s hands in his, and gazing up at her with adoration in his handsome, boyish face.
“Tut, tut, what have we here?” cried Bertha, with sufficient lightness in her tone to render a reply unnecessary. “Rosamund, you ought to be out of doors on a day like this. Waste of God’s own sunshine to coop yourself up with a book. I shall turn you and Francie out on the moor the minute lunch is over.”
“Francie has a headache,” said Rosamund, with the quick, defensive gleam in her eyes that her guardian’s cavalier treatment of Frances’ numerous minor ailments always roused.
“She won’t get rid of it by sitting indoors,” returned Bertha decisively.
“Morris, you’ll stay to lunch, will you?”
“Thank you,” he said, rather naïvely surprised. Mrs. Tregaskis had not been prodigal of invitations recently. A vista of the moorland sweep and Rosamund opened before him, only to be blotted out by the voice of Mrs. Tregaskis, its native ring of good-humoured decision somehow emphasized:
“You and I will have a little ploy of our own, Morris, when I’ve driven my lazybones out to take some exercise. I want a chat with you.”