“Did you hear a name?”
“No.”
“I could have sworn that one of them spoke of Miss Dalrymple.”
“That is very unlikely. More probably she was in your thoughts just then.”
He felt guiltily conscious that she was seldom long out of them. But whether his companion had heard or missed it, the more he thought about it the more positive he felt that those were no phantom words which had crossed his hearing. What should have brought her name into the men’s mouths? Common-sense, which sometimes becomes a very imp of mockery, burst out laughing in his face. Why not, as well as any other name? In these days, beauties unseen and untalked about hardly count as such, fierce lights beat everywhere, tongues discuss familiarly, a serenade is not the gentle tribute of one lover for one ear, but a whole band, drums, trumpets, waking the silence, banging, flaring, calling all men to listen. He had to own this, for he had often moralised upon it. But to feel and to moralise are different conditions, and he resented that careless twitter of Anne’s name in the road.
Chapter Twenty Three.
A Walk.
The next day Wareham spent his afternoon by walking into the small country town where was the nearest railway station. Something which Sir Michael wanted gave him the excuse without which a solitary walk becomes a burden in spite of conscientious evokings of the joys of solitude. And he undertook the further office of calling at post-office and station for letters and newspapers, to the disgust of the groom, who had his own Saturday afternoon diversions in view, and felt himself defrauded. In happy ignorance of his displeasure, Wareham whistled to Venom, Hugh’s fox-terrier, and started.