"Yes, ma'am, no doubt. I wouldn't have interrupted, myself. It was father who did it, when he came in. He said you'd want some dinner to-night."
He smiled at Gerard as cordially as ever, but there was a wistfulness underlying his expression that inspired the older man with a hearty desire to shake Isabel Rose. She could watch her young lover's emotions with the same diverted interest with which she had watched the struggles of the tiny black-and-scarlet beetle drowning in her finger-bowl.
"I wish you had been with us, Corrie," was all Gerard found to say.
Through the parted curtains, the library presented such a graceful interior study as certain French artists have delighted in drawing. In the octagonal, book-lined room of rich hues and soft lights, Flavia and her father were seated together; busied in pleasant comradeship at the table whose polished surface was littered with letters, books of household accounts, and all those dainty metal and crystal trinkets the jeweller conceives necessary to the writer. Evidently they had found refreshment desirable, for a diminutive tea-table still stood near Flavia, while a pushed-back chair beneath which a young Great Dane hound lay asleep indicated that Corrie had been one of the group.
"Back, are you?" Mr. Rose called cheerily, to the two in the hall, leaning back in his chair to view them more easily. "When I heard where you were marooned, I guessed it was about time for a rescue. You children oughtn't to try roundabout country roads with a storm blowing up."
"Mr. Gerard wanted to go that way," Isabel alleged, with perfect assurance. "I told him to do as he chose."
That distortion of facts was too much to be endured, with Corrie listening and Flavia a witness. Gerard's chivalry momentarily lapsed and he struck back with all the effectiveness of superior experience.
"Yes, certainly," he confirmed, carefully distinct. "I naturally wanted to get Miss Rose safely at home as soon as possible, and since she said that road was the shortest route, I took it, of course."
"The shortest?" Corrie echoed, astounded. "The——"