Lady Lisle wondered, and started the next minute when she heard another click.
But this time it was the latch of the swing gate, half-drowned by the carriage wheels on the drive leading to the front door.
Then she fell to wondering again, and alighted to enter the house.
Just as she stepped down, a telegraph-boy came up on his bicycle, smiling, and ready to touch his cap, as he held out to her one of the familiar tinted envelopes, with prophetic notions about Christmas-boxes in the future.
“A message!” she said, changing colour for the moment, as thoughts of the possibilities so often hidden beneath one of those official envelopes crossed her mind.
“Yes, m’lady. Any answer?”
As head of the establishment of the Denes, bought and paid for with the money which formed her dowry, she took the message as a matter of course, and opened it without glancing at the direction, dropped the envelope on to the stone steps, and the pleasant breeze whisked it in among the shrubs.
She had turned pale on receiving the telegram. As she read it she turned pink on finding it was a private communication not intended for her eyes, and then scarlet with indignation and wrath.
“Why, this is dated yesterday,” she cried angrily.
“Yes, m’lady. We had such a lot o’ racing messages, my Gee couldn’t get ’em all through. But we’ve got a special gal on, and it’ll be all right now.”