“My own dearest father,” she whispered, and she would have sunk at his feet, but he gently placed her in a lounge chair and turned to Guest.
“Now, sir,” he said, as if he were delivering an order from the quarter-deck, “I am at your service.”
Myra sprang from her chair and caught her aunt’s arm, looking wildly in her eyes; and the meaning of the look was grasped.
“Stop a moment, Mark,” she said. “My carriage is waiting. You may want a woman there; I’ll come with you.”
“You?” cried her brother. “Absurd!”
“Not at all,” said the lady firmly. “Mr Guest, take me down to my carriage; I shall come.”
Sir Mark frowned, but said no more; he merely glanced back as Myra now gave up and sank in her cousin’s arms, while, as Miss Jerrold went down, her lips tightened, and she looked wonderfully like her brother, as she said to herself:
“Thank goodness! No man ever wanted to marry me.”
“Benchers’ Inn,” said Guest sharply as the footman closed the carriage door, and the trio sat in silence, each forming a mental picture of that which they were going to see.