Poor father! Yet how could he? And how could he be mixed up with all those fateful, hateful people with money, who brought their chauffeurs to the old serving-hall at the Keep? Those chauffeurs were the bane of her life; for what should she give them to eat!
Some one from behind clasped her wrists close, and held her hands still on her eyes.
"Guess!" said a sepulchrally gruff voice.
"My dear Ned! Where have you come from?" she answered gaily.
"How did you find out?" asked Ned Blackborough, seating himself on the thyme beside her.
"As if any one but Ned Cruttenden--I can't help the name, my dear--was ever quite so hoarse!"
"By George, Nell," he said, looking seawards, "it is good to be here. That's what one always says, isn't it, when the visible Body of the Lord is transfigured before one's eyes as it is now."
"You know, Ned, I do not agree with your Buddhistic notions," she said, a trifle severely.
"Beg pardon! They're not Buddhistic; but I'm always forgetting you don't like--though you will some day! Meanwhile I want to ask you a question: and as the butler told me you would be on the coast somewhere ... you've a most superior set of London servants just now, Nell----"
"To keep the chauffeurs company," she interrupted, shrugging her shoulders. "One must--but don't let's talk of it--it's sickening---- And so you came to the old place?"