“Lady Cranston has asked me to dine,” was the somewhat reserved reply.
His inquisitor nodded and cantered away. Lessingham looked after him until he had disappeared, then he turned his face towards Dreymarsh and walked steadily into the lowering afternoon. Twilight was falling as he reached Mainsail Haul, where he found Philippa entertaining some callers, to whom she promptly introduced him. Lessingham gathered, almost in the first few minutes, that his presence in Dreymarsh was becoming a subject of comment.
“My husband has played bridge with you at the club, I think,” a lady by whose side he found himself observed. “You perhaps didn't hear my name—Mrs. Johnson?”
“I congratulate you upon your husband,” Lessingham replied. “I remember him perfectly well because he kept his temper when I revoked.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “He must have taken a fancy to you, then. As a rule, they rather complain about him at bridge.”
“I formed the impression,” Lessingham continued, “that he was rather a better player than the majority of the performers there.”
Mrs. Johnson, who was a dark and somewhat forbidding-looking lady, smiled.
“He thinks so, at any rate,” she conceded. “Didn't he tell me that you were invalided home from the front?”
Lessingham shook his head.
“I am quite sure that it was not mentioned,” he said. “We walked home together as far as the hotel one evening, but we spoke only of the golf and some shooting in the neighbourhood.”