'You must forgive me,' he said, 'for calling on you on Sunday afternoon, which, I believe, is not the rule in England; but I heard that you were leaving Aspinshaw to-morrow, and I could not run the risk of not seeing you again.'
'We are always pleased to see you,' said Clare; 'but I am not going to London for some time yet. There will be a good deal of law business, I suppose, and it is not fair to carry the trouble of that to my friend's house. Is Mr Roland well?'
'He is on duty,' said Litvinoff; 'he has gone to a chapel with his aunt, which is good of him, as his views are not that way.'
Clare drew a breath of relief. She had not felt comfortable in Roland's presence since that interview with Litvinoff in the National Gallery.
'I myself shall be returning to London in a few weeks,' the young man went on. 'I have already stayed as long as I at first intended to do, but now Ferrier is good enough to wish me to stay until the household at Thornsett Edge is broken up.'
'Ah, yes, I had forgotten that. What a horrible thing! What are they going to do?'
'I believe Mr Roland will live with his aunt at Chelsea.'
'We seem to be all going to London,' said Clare, with an effort to be as cheerful as possible.
'True; but London is so vast, and in it I know so few people whom you are likely to know, that I feel I might as well be going back to Siberia for any chance I shall have of seeing you.' This with the air of one who would as soon go to Siberia as not while he was about it.
'Oh, I daresay we shall see each other,' she answered, leaning back in her chair and trifling with a big screen of peacock's feathers, which she had idly taken up. 'I'm going to stay with a lady who is madly anxious to know you.'