“Were you looking for any one?” she asked, and the man shook his head, laughing.
“No one in particular, unless it was you.”
Daphne’s soft brow darkened. “It couldn’t possibly have been me,” she said in a stately small voice, “because, you see, I don’t know you. Perhaps you didn’t know that there is no one living in Green Gardens now?”
“Oh, yes, I knew. The Fanes have left for Ceylon, haven’t they?”
“Sir Harry left two weeks ago, because he had to see the old governor before he sailed, but Lady Audrey only left last week. She had to close the London house, too, so there was a great deal to do.”
“I see. And so Green Gardens is deserted?”
“It is sold,” said Daphne, with a small quaver in her voice, “just this afternoon. I came over to say good-bye to it, and to get some mint and lavender from the garden.”
“Sold?” repeated the man, and there was an agony of incredulity in the stunned whisper. He flung out his arm against the sun-warmed bricks of the high wall as though to hold off some invader. “No, no; they’d never dare to sell it.”
“I’m glad you mind so much,” said Daphne. “It’s strange that nobody minds but us, isn’t it? I cried at first—and then I thought that it would be happier if it wasn’t lonely and empty, poor dear—and then, it was such a beautiful day, that I forgot to be unhappy.”
The man bestowed a wrenched smile on her. “You hardly conveyed the impression of unrelieved gloom as you came around that corner,” he assured her.