I protested, but she was firm. So I stood by the gate and watched her slim young figure disappear in the gathering shadows.
CHAPTER XVI
LADY ANGELA'S ENGAGEMENT
I dined that night at Rowchester. Lord Blenavon was sulky, and Lady
Angela was only fitfully gay. It was not altogether a cheerful party.
Lady Angela left us the moment Blenavon produced his cigarette-case.
"Do not stay too long, Mr. Ducaine," she said, as I held the door open for her. "I want a lesson at billiards."
I bowed and returned to my seat. Blenavon was leaning back in his chair, smoking thoughtfully.
"My sister," he remarked, looking up at the ceiling and speaking as though to himself, "would make an admirable heroine for the psychological novelist. She is a bundle of fancies; one can never rely upon what she is going to do. What other girl in the world would get engaged on the Thursday, and come down here on the Friday to think it over—leaving, of course, her fiance in town? Doesn't that strike you as singular?"
"Is it," I asked calmly, "a genuine case?"
Lord Blenavon nodded.
"I do not think that it is a secret," he said, helping himself to wine and passing the decanter. "She has made up her mind at last to marry Mostyn Ray. The affair has been hanging about for more than a year. In fact, I think that there was something said about it before Ray went abroad. Personally, I think that he is too old. I don't mind saying so to you, because that has been my opinion all along. However, I suppose it is all settled now."