"Cinders ought to know you better than anyone," remarked Mordaunt. "His opportunities are unlimited."
She laughed somewhat dubiously. "I knew you would think me horrid as soon as you began to see more of me."
He laughed also at that. "My dear, forgive me for saying so, but you are absurd—too absurd to be taken seriously, even if you are serious—which I doubt."
"But I am," she asserted. "I am. I—I am nearly always serious."
Mordaunt turned his head and looked at her with that in his eyes which she alone ever saw there, before which instinctively, almost fearfully, she veiled her own.
"You—child!" he said again softly.
And this time—perhaps because the words offered a way of escape of which she was not sorry to avail herself—Chris did not seek to contradict him. She pressed her cheek to Cinders' alert head, and said no more.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND WARNING
Rupert's description of Kellerton Old Park, though unflattering, was not far removed from the truth. The thistles in the drive that wound from the deserted lodge to the house itself certainly were abnormally high, so high that Mordaunt at once decided to abandon the car inside the great wrought-iron gates that had been the pride of the place for many years.