“It was in the bond, wasn’t it?” she answered. “Peggy will look after you all, I am sure.”
“You mean that you are going away, to leave Thorpe?” Stephen Hurd asked abruptly.
She turned her head to look at him. He was sitting a little outside the circle—an attitude typical, perhaps, of his position there. The change in her tone was slight indeed, but it was sufficient.
“I am thinking of it,” she answered. “You, Gilbert, and Captain Austin can find some men to shoot, no doubt. Ask any one you like. Peggy will see about some women for you. I draw the line at that red-haired Egremont woman. Anybody else!”
“This is a blow,” Deyes remarked, “but it was in the bond. Nothing will move me from here till the seventeenth—unless your chef should leave. Do we meet in Marienbad?”
“I am not sure,” Wilhelmina answered, playing idly with the cards. “I feel that my system requires something more soothing.”
“I hate them all—those German baths,” Lady Peggy declared. “Ridiculous places every one of them.”
“After all, you see,” Wilhelmina declared, “illness of any sort is a species of uncleanliness. I think I should like to go somewhere where people are healthy, or at least not so disgustingly frank about their livers.”
“Why not stay here?” Stephen ventured to suggest. “I doubt whether any one in Thorpe knows what a liver is.”
“‘Inutile!’” Lady Peggy exclaimed. “Wilhelmina has the ‘wander fever.’ I can see it in her face. Is it the thunder, I wonder?”