“Didn’t I hear you mention Thomson’s name just now?” he inquired. “I saw him the other day in Boulogne. Awful swell he was about something, too. A destroyer brought him across, and a Government motor-car was waiting at the quay to rush him up to the Front. We all thought at Boulogne that royalty was coming, at least.”
There was a slight frown on Granet’s forehead. He glanced half unconsciously towards Geraldine.
“Mysterious sort of fellow, Thomson,” Major Harrison continued, in blissful ignorance of the peculiar significance of his words. “You see him in Paris one day, you hear of him at the furthermost point of the French lines immediately afterwards, he reports at headquarters within a few hours, and you meet him slipping out of a back door of the War Office, a day or two later.”
“Inspector of Field Hospitals is a post which I think must have been created for him,” Colonel Grey remarked. “He’s an impenetrable sort of chap.”
“Was Major Thomson going or returning from France when you saw him last?” Geraldine asked, looking across the table.
“Coming back. When we left Boulogne, the destroyer which brought him over was waiting in the harbour. It passed us in mid-Channel, doing about thirty knots to our eighteen. Prince Cyril was rather sick. He was bringing dispatches but no one seemed to have thought of providing a destroyer for him.”
“After all,” Lady Anselman murmured, “there is nothing very much more important than our hospitals.”
The conversation drifted away from Thomson. Granet was making himself very agreeable indeed to Isabel Worth. There was a little more colour in her cheeks than at the commencement of luncheon, and her manner had become more animated.
“Tell me about the village where you live?” he inquired—“Market Burnham, isn’t it?”
“When we first went there,” she replied, “I thought that it was simply Paradise. That was four years ago, though, and I scarcely counted upon spending the winters there.”