'You never expected such luck as that, did you?' said Caffyn. 'Is there anything I can do for your ladyship?'
'Mabel asked me to drive round this way and ask if Mark has come back. There's Fräulein in the carriage too, but I wanted to ask all by myself.'
'Pray step this way,' said Caffyn, leading the way with mock politeness to a little sitting-room on the ground floor.
'I can't stay long,' said Dolly. 'Mark isn't here—I saw his face at the window upstairs. Mabel told me to see if he was quite well, and I want to ask him how he is and where he's been.'
'Afraid you can't see him just now,' said Caffyn, 'he's got some one with him he hasn't seen for a long time—we mustn't disturb him; tell Mabel he'll come to-morrow and he's quite well.'
Dolly was preparing to go, when she discovered some portmanteaus and boxes in a corner. 'What a funny box, with all those red tickets on it!' she said. 'Oh, and a big white helmet—it's green inside. Is Mark going to be married in that thing, Harold?'—all at once she stopped short in her examination. 'Why—why, they've got poor Vincent's name on them! they have—look!' And Caffyn realised that he had been too ingenious: he had forgotten all about this luggage in showing Dolly to that room, in his fear lest her voice should be too audible in the passage.
'There, there—you're keeping Fräulein waiting all this time. Never mind about the luggage,' he said hurriedly. 'Good-bye, Dolly; sorry you can't stop.'
'But I can stop,' objected Dolly, who was not easily got rid of at the best of times. 'Harold, I'm sure that dear Vincent has come alive again—he's the somebody Mark hasn't seen for a long time.... Oh, if it really is ... I must go and see!'
Caffyn saw his best course now was the hazardous one of telling the truth. 'Well,' he said, 'as it happens, you're right. Vincent was not drowned, and he is here—but I don't advise you to go to see him for all that.'
'Why?' said Dolly, with her joy suddenly checked—she scarcely knew why.