"I am sorry to say that I was influenced by no such sanitary precautions. My correspondence will keep; and I have yet to learn that to read letters in the presence of ladies is--"
"Pray, make no apologies, as far as I am concerned," said Barbara, with a curl of her lip and an expansion of nostril; "if you have any wish to read your doubtless important correspondence--"
"I have no such wish, Miss Lexden. Litera scripta manet; which, being interpreted, means, my letters will keep. And now, Mr. Vincent, I'll trouble you for a skilful help of that game-pie."
Churchill remained firm; he was still at breakfast, and his letters remained unopened in his pocket, when Barbara left the room to prepare for a drive with Miss Townshend. As they reëntered the avenue after a two hours' turn round the Downs, they met Captain Lyster in a dog-cart.
"I have been over to Brighton," he explained; "drove Churchill to the station. He got some news this morning, and is obliged to run up to town for a day or two. But he's coming back, Miss Lexden."
"Is he, indeed!" said Barbara. "What splendid intelligence! I should think, Captain Lyster, that, since the announcement of the fall of Sebastopol, England has scarcely heard such glorious news as that Mr. Churchill is coming back to Bissett." And, with a clear, ringing laugh, she pulled the ponies short up at the hall-door, jumped from the carriage, and passed to her room.
"She don't like his going, all the same,--give you my word," said Lyster, simply, to Miss Townshend.
And she did not. She coupled his sudden departure with the receipt of that pink envelope and the address in the feminine scrawl. Who was the writer of that letter? What could the business be to take him away so hastily? With her head leaning on her hand, she sits before her dressing-table pondering these things. It certainly was a woman's writing. Is this quiet, sedate, self-possessed man a flirt? Does he carry on a correspondence with-- And if he does, what is it to her? She is nothing to him--and yet--who can it be? It was a woman's hand! She wonders where he is at that moment; she would like to see him just for an instant.
If she could have had her wish, she would have seen him by himself in a railway-carriage, an unheeded Times lying across his knee, and in his hand a little pearl-gray kid-glove.