"Pick water lilies and gaze in each other's eyes," said Gwen, laughing; "that was the programme Sir Geoffrey mapped out for us. Oh! I forgot. He asked me to send you to him directly you arrived. He's in the library."
"Can't it keep till after luncheon?" Ralph asked indifferently. "I want to talk to you."
"No," Gwen replied; "you must go now. I promised that you would. He said he had a bone to pick with you."
"Did he?" said Ralph. "I wonder what's the matter."
"I don't know," Gwen answered, "but he was very quiet at breakfast, and I guessed there was something wrong; then he told me it was about you, and I said you could explain anything you did or didn't do, and you've got to go at once and do so."
"A very lucid statement," Ralph said, smiling. "Well, it's a bore to have to leave you at once, but if you've promised, there's no help for it."
"None," said Gwendolen gravely. "Come along, Ralph."
In her heart she was a little uneasy, for although she had absolute confidence in Ralph's perfect integrity, she had never before seen Sir Geoffrey look so troubled at anything in which his favourite nephew was concerned. But she stifled her not unnatural curiosity, and, leaving Ralph at the library door, ran off to the room where her mother was writing wholly unnecessary letters.
Sir Geoffrey was so engrossed in a book that he did not hear Ralph come into the room. Comfortably ensconced in a huge armchair, with spectacles on his nose, and the sunlight streaming through the window upon his silver hair, he embodied the general idea of a cultivated old English gentleman. Ralph looked at him, and then spoke.
"Gwendolen tells me you want to see me, Uncle Geoffrey, so I've come straight in."