"Perhaps--if there is any!" Steele allowed his glance for the fraction of a moment to linger on Lord Ronsdale's face.
"I'll answer for that." A slight pause ensued. "Decided rather suddenly to run down, didn't you?"
"Heard you were on the continent. From Sir Charles, don't you know. Pleasant time, I trust?" he drawled.
"Thank you!" John Steele did not answer directly. "Your solicitude," he laughed, "honors me--my Lord!"
And that had been all, all the words spoken, at least. To the others there had been nothing beneath the surface between them; for the time the two men constituted but two figures in a social gathering.
A rainy spell put a stop to outdoor diversions; for twenty-four hours now the party had been thrown upon their own resources, to devise such indoor amusement as occurred to them. Strathorn House, however, was large; it had its concert stage, a modern innovation; its armory hall and its ball-room. Pleasure seekers could and did find here ample facilities for entertaining themselves.
The second morning of the dark weather discovered two of the guests in the oak-paneled smoking-room of Strathorn House. One of them brushed the ash from his cigar meditatively and then stretched himself more comfortably in the great leather chair.
"No fox-hunt or fishing for any of us to-day," he remarked with a yawn.
The other, who had been gazing through a window at a prospect of dripping leaves and leaden sky, answered absently; then his attention centered itself on the small figure of a boy coming up through the avenue of trees toward a side entrance.