“He’s prevented.”
“But by what? Is he ill?”
“Oh, no. He’s just—just prevented, you know.”
And Jellaby slipped his arm out of my grasp and went to stare with the others up at the signpost.
On the road we finally decided to take, while they were all clustering round the labourer I have mentioned who directed us to the deserted farm, I approached Frau von Eckthum who stood on the outer fringe of the cluster, and said in the gentler voice I instinctively used when speaking to her, “I hear Lord Sigismund is not coming back.”
Gently as my voice was, it yet made her start; she generally did start when spoken to, being unusually (it adds to her attractiveness) highly strung.
(“She doesn’t when I speak to her,” said Edelgard, on my commenting to her on this characteristic.
“My dear, you are merely another woman,” I replied—somewhat sharply, for Edelgard is really often unendurably obtuse.)
“I hear Lord Sigismund is not coming back,” I said, then, very gently, to the tender lady.