She leaned towards him.
“You are only going to have one companion,” she told him. “I have demanded your head upon a charger—or rather your body in tennis flannels—for the rest of the day. The others are all going for a picnic.”
“Is that fellow Maurice somebody coming down?” Jacob asked anxiously.
“He hasn’t even been asked,” she assured him, with a flash of her blue eyes. “Here we are at the first lodge. Now for a gallop up the avenue.”
The Marquis in kilts, the very prototype of the somewhat worn Scottish chieftain of ancient lineage, welcomed his visitor on the threshold, from which the great oak doors had been thrown back.
“So sorry we haven’t the bagpipes,” he apologised, as he shook Jacob’s hand. “We shall get into form in a day or two. Now you’ll have a bath and some breakfast, won’t you? Your things will be up in a few moments. You’ll find some old friends here,” he added, as he piloted Jacob across the huge, bare hall, “but my daughter tells me that she claims you for tennis—to-day, at any rate.”
Everything seemed cheerful and reassuring. His room looked straight out on to a magnificent, rock-strewn sea. The bathroom which opened from it was a model of comfort and even luxury. The Marchioness welcomed him cordially, later on, and Mr. Dane Montague and Mr. Hartwell seemed very harmless in their ill-chosen country clothes, and ingratiating almost to the point of fulsomeness. Lady Mary glanced approvingly at Jacob’s tennis flannels.
“I’m sure you’ll be far too good for me,” she sighed, as she gave him his coffee. “My racquet’s simply horrible, too. It’s three years old and wants restringing badly.”
“I hope you won’t think it a liberty,” Jacob said simply, “but I had to call at Tate’s to get one of mine which I’d had restrung, and I saw such a delightfully balanced lady’s racquet that I ventured to bring it down. I thought you might play with it, at any rate, if you didn’t feel like doing me the honour of accepting it.”
“You dear person!” she exclaimed joyfully. “If father and mother weren’t here, and my mouth weren’t full of scone, I believe I should kiss you. There isn’t anything in the world I wanted so much as a Tate racquet.”