Fanny pointed again, this time with dawning hesitation.
“And the other is the bulb! Oh-h-h!” They fell upon each other, as young creatures do, with bubbling laughter. Fanny screwed up her thermometer vindictively, and tossed it into a basket; then, to get out of the reach of Millie’s mockery, skilfully turned the conversation to the point from which it had broken away. She produced Lord Milborough’s letter, and, for the twentieth time, took opinion upon its meaning—“Dear Fan—Don’t be a baby. I’ll write by and by,”—on her dignity as to the baby, and perplexed by being, as it were, set on the shelf, at a moment which for a woman is the one moment to which all time has been leading up.
“It is so strange, so strange!” she repeated. “A whole week ago!”
Millie, turned to sympathy at once by the droop of the mobile mouth, uttered her consolations.
“Dear, you couldn’t expect him to like it very much, and perhaps it is better he should not write at once. Now he will have time to think it over, and be sensible.”
“John has had no answer either, for I told him to telegraph.” She released herself from Millie, and sat up, fun sparkling in her eyes. “Though I knew that was asking too much. If I’d been an old woman to be got into a hospital now! But just for ourselves—oh, the extravagance of it!—he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t! So perhaps Milborough’s had the decency to write to him.”
“And, anyway, you’ll be your own mistress in a year.”
“Yes.” She made a face. “A whole year! Besides, I want Milborough to be nice. And here he leaves me, not even telling me when he is to be at Thorpe again, or whether I’m to ask any one, or—I tell you what, Millie, perhaps we can see something in the World. I’ll run down-stairs and get it.”
The World gave the required information. Lord Milborough’s name figured in a list of visitors at a big Yorkshire country-house. There, it also appeared, were to be found Lady and Miss Dalrymple; and after the girls’ surmises, the names had a certain significance.
“He has actually left the yacht! There is something, I am certain there is something! At another time I should write and ask him,” cried Lady Fanny. “Now, where is Mr Wareham?”