Roger shook his head and smiled. “Of course he took no more notice of that than I do. After all, it is rather absurd, isn’t it? I merely happened to be the first man that saw you. But I liked looking after you, and I should be sorry if I never saw you again. And so would my uncle.”
At the mention of the priest contrition assailed Jeremy. He had a vision of the old man desiring information about the twentieth century and not receiving it. Roger saw what was passing through his mind and again shook his head slightly.
“The Speaker thinks my uncle an old fool,” he went on reflectively, “and from some points of view he’s right. And he thinks me a young fool, which I shouldn’t presume to dispute. For that matter he thinks most people are fools. And the Lady Burney thinks I am a good-for-nothing young scoundrel—but she has her own reasons for that.”
“And what does the Lady Eva think of you?” Jeremy asked curiously.
“Oh, the Lady Eva’s a wonder!” Roger said with more fervor than he usually displayed. “She’s not like any one else alive. Why, do you know the other day, when she was out riding with her groom she beckoned to me and made me ride with her for ten minutes while I told her all about you.”
Jeremy supposed that this must be unusually daring conduct for a young girl of the twenty-first century, and he acknowledged the impression it made on him by nodding his head two or three times.
“That’s the chief reason why the Lady Burney hates me,” Roger continued, a slight warmth still charging his voice. “But she doesn’t understand her own daughter. The Lady Eva takes no particular interest in me. She merely can’t bear being cooped up, like other girls, and not being able to talk to any one she wants to. And because I’ve gone to her once or twice when she has called to me, they think there’s something between us. But there isn’t: I wish there were.”
Jeremy regarded with admiration this moderate and gentle display of passion. “But whom will she marry?” he ventured, feeling himself a little disturbed by his own question as soon as it was uttered.
“I believe the Lady Burney would like her to marry that horrible Canadian. And her father would marry her to any one if he saw his profit in it. It’s lucky for her that the Chairman of Bradford is married already.”
“What makes you say that?”