Francis was silent for several moments. Lady Cynthia watched him curiously.
“At any rate,” she observed, “in whatever mood she went away this morning, you have evidently succeeded in doing what I have never seen any one else do—breaking through her indifference. I shouldn't have thought that anything short of an earthquake would have stirred Margaret, these days.”
“These days?” he repeated quickly. “How long have you known her?”
“We were at school together for a short time,” she told him. “It was while her father was in South America. Margaret was a very different person in those days.”
“However was she induced to marry a person like Oliver Hilditch?” Francis speculated.
His companion shrugged her shoulders.
“Who knows?” she answered indifferently. “Are you going to drop me?”
“Wherever you like.”
“Take me on to Grosvenor Square, if you will, then,” she begged, “and deposit me at the ancestral mansion. I am really rather annoyed about Margaret,” she went on, rearranging her veil. “I had begun to have hopes that you might have revived my taste for normal things.”
“If I had had the slightest intimation—” he murmured.