Mr. Fane-Smith was touched.
“Well, my dear,” he said. “You may be right, after all, and I may be wrong. All my anxiety is only for your ultimate good.”
The train was on the point of starting, he gave her a warm hand shake, and in spite of all that jarred in their respective natures, Erica ended by liking him the best of her new relations.
CHAPTER XXX. Slander Leaves a Slur
For slander lives upon succession,
Forever housed, where it once
gets possession. Comedy of Errors.
Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an infidel.
Hudibras
“Blessed old London, how delightful it is to come back to it!” exclaimed Erica, as she and Tom drove home from Paddington on the afternoon of her return from Greyshot. “Tell the man not to go through the back streets, there's a good boy! Ah, he's doing it of his own accord! Why, the park trees are much browner than the Mountshire ones!”
“We have been prophesying all manner of evil about your coming back,” said Tom looking her over critically from head to foot. “I believe mother thought you would never come that the good Christians down at Greyshot having caught you would keep you, and even the chieftain was the least bit in the world uneasy.”
“Nonsense,” said Erica, laughing, “he knows better.”
“But they did want to keep you?”