"This week," she echoed, looking from one to the other, "I don't quite understand." Then suddenly, for the first time in her life she blushed. It was extremely uncomfortable, and she felt vaguely annoyed with both the young men. So she turned to them stiffly. "Will you come and see grandfather and have tea first, or go to your rooms--you know where they are."
There was a pause, broken accusingly by Ted. "Lord Blackborough--I mean Ned----"
"Thank you," put in Ned with a laugh, "I can do my own dirty work, if you please. The fact is"--he paused, still fighting shy of that dear name, "I mean I'm afraid I can't stop. If I had guessed, but--but I didn't!" He shrugged his shoulders. "It is so hard to predicate perfection. The fact is, my cousin is living at Plas Afon for a fortnight or so, and I must go back to her--after tea."
"Plas Afon," she echoed eagerly. "Oh! I hear that is such a lovely place. How lucky you are," then the personal aspect of the news made her frown a little. "Dear me!" she said, "what a pity! It spoils so much. Now I shall have to differentiate between you two. Will you come in to tea, Lord Blackborough and Mr. Cruttenden."
They followed her meekly, feeling vaguely ashamed of themselves.
[CHAPTER XIII]
"She is as straight as a yard o' pump water, an' won't never brush forty again," said Martha up to her elbows in flour, austerely, "but I wouldn't trust her for that neither. No! Not with Bate comin' into his dinner wantin' comfort. He have a trick o' blushin', Miss H'Aura, as sympathy might make a marryin' on--an' I won't have it in the 'ouse."
"But I thought," said Aura gravely, for she was accustomed by now to Martha's view of the new parlour-maid, "that Bate gave Parkinson no encouragement."
"Encouragement," echoed Martha bitterly, "no more he do. Why! he don't even wink at her. Give her the cold shoulder constant; but there! she's o' that sort, Miss H'Aura, as don't mind whether a jint's 'ot or cold so long as it's man's meat. Besides, master 'ud need a woman folk to stand atwixt him and the fun'ral if there was a smash in the motor, for Bate ain't no manner of use when there's tears about--'es got such a feelin' 'eart. So, thanking 'is lordship all the same for the kind thought, I'd better stop at 'ome."
There was never any questioning Martha's decision; so Aura went back to the drawing-room doubtfully. It was a glorious day and Ned Blackborough had come over half-an-hour before, bearing both to herself and her grandfather notes of invitation from Mrs. Tressilian to come over to lunch and see the show place. The notes had evidently been all in order, for though her grandfather had declined brusquely for himself, he had looked at her as if he had just realised she was no longer a child, and asked her wistfully if she would like to go. And she without a thought had told the truth--namely that she would love it. Then had come doubts. The last three days, filled up as they had been by the absolute adulation of the two young men had brought her a curious, innate, but till then dormant, sense that there were things which girls ought not to do. And having, much against her will, admitted this to herself, she became sternly scrupulous.