She smiled, flushing more deeply. He stepped forward, took her hand, and held it very tightly.
"Goodness! But I have been impatient for you to come!" he cried.
"I'm not late," she said in her low, sweet, rather drawling voice.
He let go of her hand and said: "I don't know how it is, but I've been as restless as a cat all the morning. I'm never sure that you will be able to come; and the uncertainty worries me."
"But you saw me for three hours yesterday," she said, moving forward.
"Yesterday?" he said, falling into step with her. "Yesterday is a thousand years away. I wasn't sure that you'd come today."
"Why shouldn't I come?" she said.
"Loudwater might have got to know of it and stopped you coming."
"Fortunately he doesn't take enough interest in my doings. Of course, if I didn't turn up at a meal, he'd make a fuss, though why he should make such a point of our having all our meals together I can't conceive. I should certainly enjoy mine much more if I had them in my sitting-room," she said in a dispassionate tone, for all the world as if she were discussing the case of some one else.
"I am so worried about you," he said with a harassed air. "Ever since that evening I heard him bullying you I've been simply worried to death about it."