'I suppose,' he said at length, with a glance at his daughter, 'that what you have just said explains our friend's return to his oil-cloth.'
'Not entirely, I think.'
'H'm. You sent him about his business, however.
Annabel looked straight before her at the sea; her lips barely smiled.
'You are mistaken. He gave me no right to do so.'
'Oh? Then I have been on a wrong tack.'
'Shall we walk homewards?'
Towards the end of August, Mr. and Mrs. Dalmaine were at Eastbourne for a few days. Paula spent one hour with her cousin in private, no more. The two had drifted further apart than ever. But in that one hour Paula had matter enough for talk. There had been a General Election during the summer, and Mr. Dalmaine had victoriously retained his seat for Vauxhall. His wife could speak of nothing else.
'What I would have given if you could have seen me canvassing, Bell! Now I've found the one thing that I can do really well. I wish Parliaments were annual!'
'My dear Paula, what has made you so misanthropic?'