‘She wants me to go to Scotland with you,’ he said, bursting in one day on Lewes. ‘She wants me to go away without her. Doesn’t care a hang. Four solid weeks. The whole of August.’
‘How sensible,’ said Lewes, not looking up from his work.
‘It’s that beastly baby.’
‘Baby?’ Lewes did look up.
‘What? But surely——’
‘Oh, don’t be a fool. Virginia’s. She won’t leave London. Why she can’t go somewhere round near Chickover, where I could go too and be with her and get some golf as well—Lewes, old man, I believe she’s fed up with me.’
And he stared at Lewes with hot eyes.
In his turn Lewes told him not to be a fool; but the mere thought of Catherine, his Catherine, being fed up with him as he put it, sent him rushing back to her to see if it could possibly be true.
She was so airy, so much detached.