'You know your way wonderfully well,' Margaret said.
'Yes,' answered her companion carelessly. 'I don't think I could lose myself in London, from Limehouse to Wormwood Scrubs.'
She spoke quite naturally, as if it were not in the least surprising that a smart woman of the world should possess such knowledge.
'You must have a marvellous memory for places,' Margaret ventured to say.
'Why? Because I know my way about? I walk a great deal, that's all.'
Margaret wondered whether the Countess Leven habitually took her walks in the direction of Limehouse in the east or Shepherd's Bush in the west; and if so, why? As for the distance, the thoroughbred looked as if she could do twenty miles without turning a hair, and Margaret wished she would not walk quite so fast, for, like all great singers, she herself easily got out of breath if she was hurried; it was not the distance that surprised her, however, but the fact that Lady Maud should ever visit such regions.
They reached the house and found Lord Creedmore in the library, his lame foot on a stool and covered up with a chudder. His clear brown eyes examined Margaret's face attentively while he held her hand in his.
'So you are little Margery,' he said at last, with a very friendly smile. 'Do you remember me at all, my dear? I suppose I have changed almost more than you have.'
Margaret remembered him very well indeed as Mr. Foxwell, who used always to bring her certain particularly delicious chocolate wafers whenever he came to see her father in Oxford. She sat down beside him and looked at his face—clean-shaven, kindly, and energetic—the face of a clever lawyer and yet of a keen sportsman, a type you will hardly find out of England.
Lady Maud left the two alone after a few minutes, and Margaret found herself talking of her childhood and her old home, as if nothing very much worth mentioning had happened in her life during the last ten or a dozen years. While she answered her new friend's questions and asked others of him she unconsciously looked about the room. The writing-table was not far from her, and she saw on it two photographs in plain ebony frames; one was of her father, the other was a likeness of Lady Maud. Little by little she understood that her father had been Lord Creedmore's best friend from their schoolboy days till his death. Yet although they had constantly exchanged short visits, the one living in Oxford and the other chiefly in town, their wives had hardly known each other, and their children had never met.