Under cover of Hermione's gaiety, I managed to ask Bettina what was the matter with Ranny.
"I don't know," she whispered.
I saw it was true. Bettina did not know.
She leaned across me to find a place on the crowded table for her teacup and the low voice was earnest enough: "Find out."
The rain had been only a passing shower.
"Oh, yes, the sun has come out—but my father hasn't! Didn't I say," Hermione laughed, "no man ever knows when to come away from this place?" Then she swept us all into the garden. "If he doesn't come soon I shall throw gravel up at the window. Isn't it this window?"
Bettina said very likely Lord Helmstone was having tea upstairs and that it had not gone up till after ours. Ranny and I left the new young man and Bettina trying to prevent Hermione from carrying out her audacious plan and apparently succeeding. For Lord Helmstone did not appear for another half-hour. And still no sign of Eric.
Ranny asked me how the sunk garden was coming on. I didn't like going so far from the gate, but Betty's earnest "find out" was ringing in my ears. I sent a searching look across the heath, and then Ranny and I left the others and went down to the rock-quadrangle that used to be so tidily affluent in stone-loving mosses, sedums and suchlike. The weeds were fast driving the more delicate things out of the neglected tangle. For the old gardener had been gone a year, now, and there was overmuch for a jobbing person to do in a day or two a week.
I apologised for the poor unkempt place, thinking how different I might have made it, but for the hours I spent over books. And would Eric have liked me better if——
I craned my neck, uneasy at not being able to see the gate nor any part of the bypath. Only the higher reach of heath road.