“Besides, I am going myself to-morrow,” I said, “if Véronique can get the packing done.”
“Nonsense—how can I make you understand that I do not mean to let you go at all.”
I did not answer—only looked at him defiantly.
Mr. Barton was waiting patiently for us in the white drawing-room, and we had not been munching muffins for five minutes when the sound of wheels crunching the gravel of the great sweep—the windows of this room look out that way—interrupted our manufactured conversation.
“This must be Bob arriving,” Mr. Carruthers said, and went reluctantly into the hall to meet his guest.
They came back together presently, and he introduced Lord Robert to me.
I felt at once he was rather a pet! Such a shape! Just like the Apollo of Belvidere! I do love that look, with a tiny waist and nice shoulders, and looking as if he were as lithe as a snake, and yet could break pokers in half like Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre”!
He has great, big, sleepy eyes of blue, and rather a plaintive expression, and a little fairish moustache turned up at the corners, and the nicest mouth one ever saw, and when you see him moving, and the back of his head, it makes you think all the time of a beautifully groomed thoroughbred horse. I don’t know why. At once—in a minute—when we looked at one another, I felt I should like “Bob”! He has none of Mr. Carruthers’ cynical, hard, expression, and I am sure he can’t be nearly as old, not more than twenty-seven, or so.
He seemed perfectly at home, sat down and had tea, and talked in the most casual, friendly way. Mr. Carruthers appeared to freeze up, Mr. Barton got more banal—and the whole thing entertained me immensely.
I often used to long for adventures in the old days with Mrs. Carruthers, and here I am really having them!