“Yes?”
“Yes; picking flowers. They are all ready now for Teresa to put in when she comes. Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“She does wander so far by herself; I wonder she isn’t afraid. Shall we go and look for her? I have nearly finished, Walter. I have written all this to Dobbin. Look!” She held up the sprawly sheet for his admiration. “Haven’t I been good?”
“You are always good,” he said remorsefully. And he glanced at her, thinking for the hundredth time how pretty she was, and wondering why everything she said should be so flatly ineffective. But he had something to tell her, and he dashed at it hurriedly—
“I’m afraid, I’m very much afraid, that I shall have to go back to England.”
“To England!” She looked at him incredulously.
“Yes. I’m wanted there.”
“But not yet. You’ve had no letters to-day.”
He cursed his want of premeditation. He had forgotten that every now and then Sylvia developed an odd practical shrewdness.