"Quite right; and in obedience to their commands I have sent Miss Gillespie off this very day to take a house, and make all necessary arrangements."
"Who's Miss Gillespie?"
"My-well, I don't know what. I believe factotum is the Latin word for it. She's Miss Hammond's governess (my stepdaughter, you know), and my general adviser and manager. I don't know what I should do without her, as I told Colonel Alsager, who, by the way, did not pay much attention."
Laurence grinned a polite grin, but said never a word.
"She was with me in the pony-carriage the first day Mr. Bertram introduced you to me, Sir Charles. Ah, but she had her veil down, I recollect; and she asked all about you afterwards."
"Very civil of her to take any interest in me," said Sir Charles. "I recollect a veiled person in the pony-carriage; but not a bit of interest did I take in her. All that concentrated elsewhere, and that sort of thing;" and he smiled at Mrs. Hammond in a manner that made Laurence's stern face grow sterner than ever.
"Well, but about Torquay," continued Sir Charles. "I thought at first it was a tremendous nuisance your having to go out of town; but now I've got an idea which does not seem so bad. Town's horribly slow, you know, utterly empty; one does not know what to do with oneself; and so I've been suggesting to Georgie why not go down to Redmoor--our country place in Devon, you know--close to Torquay,--and one could fill the house with pleasant people, and you could come over from Torquay, and it would be very jolly indeed."
He said it in an off-hand manner, but he nevertheless looked earnestly up into Mrs. Hammond's face, and Laurence Alsager's expression grew sterner than ever.
Mrs. Hammond returned Sir Charles's glance, and said, "That would be thoroughly delightful! I was looking forward with horror, I confess, to a sojourn at Torquay. Those dreadful people in respirators always creeping about, and the stupid dinner-parties, where the talk is always about the doctor, and the quarter in which the wind is. But with you and Lady Mitford in the neighbourhood it would be quite another thing."
"O yes, and we'd get some jolly people down there.--Alsager, you'd come?"