“Yes, my dear—Miss Alleyne,” said the major, correcting himself. “The Italians are great eaters of fungi. My brother found Rome and Florence very dull. Of course he was longing to be back amongst his farming stock. Great student of the improvement of cattle, Miss Alleyne. I found the country about Rome and Florence most interesting. It would have been far more so if I had had a sympathetic companion.”
“I must—I will tell him everything,” thought Lucy; and then the colour came, and she felt that it would be impossible, and that her only course was to allow time to smooth away this little burr.
“Are you finding truffles?” she said, with assumed cheerfulness.
He looked at her in a curiously wistful manner for a few moments, and that look was agony to Lucy, as her conscience told her that she had had a fall from the high niche to which she had risen in the major’s estimation.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, and there was an unwonted coldness and gravity in his manner; “at my old pursuit, Miss Alleyne—at my old pursuit. So you have not quite given it up?”
“Oh no,” cried Lucy, trying to pass over the coldness, which chilled her warm young heart. “I have been collecting several times lately, and—”
Lucy stopped short, for the major was looking at her keenly, as if recalling the fact that when she had been mushrooming she had encountered Rolph sauntering about with a cigar in his mouth.
“Yes,” said the major, quietly; “and were you very successful?”
It was a very simple question, just such a one as anyone might ask to help a hesitating speaker who had come to a standstill; but to Lucy it seemed so different from what she had been accustomed to hear from the major’s lips. His manner had always been tenderly paternal towards her; there had been such openness and full confidence between them, and such a warm pressure of hand to hand. Now this was gone, and there was a cold and dreary gap.
“Successful?” said Lucy, with her voice trembling and her face beginning to work. “Yes—no—I—Have you many truffles, Major Day?”