"Hazel received an invitation last night to spend a week with the Travers," Gerald announced conversationally, when all four were luxuriously smoking. "She is rather bothered about it; she does not care to leave the mater for so long."
"She could cut the visit short," Paul said, not unwilling to suggest so pleasing a solution of the difficulty. "How—er—how would your sister go?" he added, prefiguring himself and Hazel taking the long drive together in his dogcart, through the beautiful countryside.
But Gerald's reply quickly extinguished any such day-dream. "Oh, young Travers would fetch her in the trap; that is easy enough," he said carelessly.
"Is that Digby?" Paul asked quickly.
"Yes," Gerald replied, "he is desperately gone on Hazel—makes an awful idiot of himself."
"How old is he?" Paul asked curtly.
"About two- or three-and-twenty," Teddie broke in. "He is a decent fellow enough if only he would not sing."
Paul's innate delicacy would not permit him to ask that which he longed to know: whether or not that brown-eyed child, Hazel, reciprocated the feeling of the importunate Travers. However, Hugh soon relieved him on that score.
"Of course, Hazel does not guess what he is up to," he said, somewhat scornfully, in no wise trying to hide his contempt of the laboriously arranged and clumsily carried out tactics of young Travers. "How should she? None of us are likely to open her eyes. He only succeeds in boring her fearfully; she keeps out of his way whenever she can."
Paul was conscious of a sudden interest, almost amounting to a liking, for the luckless young man. "What sort of a fellow is he to look at?" he asked, readjusting his tie with some complacency.