“Nanny thinks she is lovely,” he announced. “She says I am in love with her. Am I, mother?”
“You are too young to be in love,” she said. “And even when you are older you must not fall in love with people you know nothing about.”
It was an unconscious bit of Scotch cautiousness which she at once realized was absurd and quite out of place. But—!
She realized it because he stood up and squared his shoulders in an odd young-mannish way. He had not flushed even faintly before and now a touch of colour crept under his fair skin.
“But I do love her,” he said. “I do. I can’t stop.” And though he was quite simple and obviously little boy-like, she actually felt frightened for a moment.
CHAPTER IX
On the afternoon of the day upon which this occurred, Coombe was standing in Feather’s drawing-room with a cup of tea in his hand and wearing the look of a man who is given up to reflection.
“I saw Mrs. Muir today for the first time for several years,” he said after a silence. “She is in London with the boy.”
“Is she as handsome as ever?”
“Quite. Hers is not the beauty that disappears. It is line and bearing and a sort of splendid grace and harmony.”