“I am not a forgetful person, Miss Pennington,” Val said, quietly.
Polly looked at him sideways out of her sparkling eyes.
“I think you have a good opinion of yourself. Big people are every bit as conceited as little ones, I find.”
Valentine laughed.
“Well, if I am conceited you must try and take it out of me, for I hope to see a great deal of you now if you will let me come. I should have been here long ago, but I have had to help my sister. We have been moving into another house.”
“Oh! you poor things,” Polly said, sympathetically. “A move is a real calamity. I should hate it. We are told by all our relations that we have no business here, and that we ought to move; but I won’t let my mother budge. I know everybody considers we ought to bury ourselves in a tiny house in the suburbs, but mother has lived in this big house ever since I can remember anything, and I mean to keep her here as long as I can. But why have you moved?” she queried, in her frank, direct way. “Hubert Kestridge made us all envious by his description of your dear old home in Dynechester. Were you obliged to leave it?”
“The Dower House belongs to Sir Mark Wentworth, and he requires it,” Valentine explained. Had he needed confirmation of his theory that Christina’s excuse had been invented, Polly’s words would have given it to him, but he had, as we know, at once discredited her declared intention of offering the old house as a home to her mother and sister, so Polly’s surprise at his news did not astonish him.
Polly said “Oh!” to his explanation, then she took him downstairs out of the large drawing room to a more cozy corner.
“Mother will be in directly, and then we will have tea. I don’t have a fire in the drawing room very often, it makes too much work for one servant, especially as my brother is at home just now. They had to send him away from his school in Dresden. He has been ill.”
Valentine stood on the hearthrug in front of the dining-room fire. It was the room where that unpleasant scene had been enacted on that bygone day.