“You have been here before, I know,” he said, as they walked towards the house. “I expect I was at Oxford, or abroad,” he added hastily, cursing himself for the allusion which might recall expeditions with the dead mother.
But Rosamund adjusted the trend of the conversation as easily as she adjusted her pace to his halting steps.
“How nice to go abroad,” she said wistfully. “You must know a lot of places. Have you been to Russia?”
“No,” said Ludovic, and almost found himself asking, “Have you?” as though to a contemporary.
“Neither have I, of course,” Rosamund assured him rather apologetically, “but I am very much interested in it just at present; I’ve been reading about Siberia.”
“What was the book?”
“Oh, it’s only a children’s book—and I think it’s rather old-fashioned—one about Siberian exiles.”
A sudden memory of his boyhood, book-encompassed, stirred eagerly in Ludovic.
“Is it called ‘The Young Exiles’?” he cried.
“Oh! have you read it too?”