'Whoever made it, it is charming. This is our dance, Miss Drummond, I believe, but Lady Arbuthnot wants us to desecrate the past. I mean,' he went on after a slight pause, 'that we are to take Jerry to see some dreadful people dance the Lancers!'
'There are some pasts which do not admit of desecration,' put in Lady Arbuthnot sharply, 'and that is one of them.'
'Neither to be desecrated, nor forgotten,' he added. 'Come along, Jerry!'
As they passed out into the garden Lesley remained silent.
She was conscious once again of not understanding the whole drift of the words which had just been spoken. And this time her temper rose with the certainty that she was mixed up in them; so, after a bit, she frowned and said point blank--
4 Tell me, please, why Lady Arbuthnot chose this dress for me. I am certain you know, don't you?'
For a moment he was staggered; then he laughed. 'Why,' he echoed, 'have you forgotten, so soon, that Greensleeves are your racing colours? Bonnie Lesley's colours. I'm not so ungrateful as that, Miss Drummond; but then the money I won on her is next my heart at the present moment. Fact, I assure you; for I always carry my betting-book in my breast-pocket so as to be handy!'
She told herself he was incorrigible; had, in fact, almost gone on to the faint blame--which in a woman's mind covers all possible breaches of the ten commandments--of thinking he was 'not at all a nice man,' when Jerry, as he had already done more than once, prevented quarrel by such a tight grip on both the hands he held, that alienation seemed impossible to them.
'Oh dear?' he sighed, his wide eyes on the couples that were waiting in front of the Residency for the native infantry band, which had been hastily summoned for the al-fresco dance, to strike up. 'I do wish there wasn't any nasty old past to come and make it all make-believe, when it might be real; 'cos it is a deader, you know, and we're alive?'
Jack Raymond looked over to the Greensleeves and laughed. 'Sound philosophy, Jerry,' he said. 'If it was real, what would you do?