"I was so afraid you wouldn't come!" he murmured.
"I was much pleased to accept your kind invitation," she returned, demurely, while Clare shot a quick glance of jealous inquiry from one to the other.
Miss Cavan could not, however, complain that the companion whose presence she so much objected to endeavoured in any way to outshine her in conversation. Laline scarcely spoke at all during tea, at which meal she presided behind the tea-urn, her manipulation of which filled Wallace with secret rapture. There was something so delightfully domestic in the sight of her slim wrists peeping from her neat blue-serge sleeves as she filled the cups, something so suggestive of honeymoon-breakfasts and little tête-à-tête meals on winter evenings, that it was as much as he could do to refrain from springing from his seat and proposing to her there and then, and prefacing his remarks with a kiss on each enchanting wrist.
Old Mr. Wallace sat stroking his silver-gray beard and gazing with much satisfaction on the assembled guests after they had taken their place round the tea-table. At length he turned to Mrs. Vandeleur, and addressed her in his usual slow tones, marked by a strong Scotch accent.
"I believe, madam," he said, "that I am very much behind the times. But I am an old man, and I live in a very old house and carry on a very old business, and that must be my excuse. My boy Wallace humours me; he knows I like a table to be where I'm used to seeing it—in the middle of the room—and the chairs drawn up round it, and so he puts it there. And now I am wondering whether the two charming young ladies you have brought with you to-day will humour me too?"
"In what, Mr. Armstrong?"
"Would they take off their hats while they are here?" he asked, with a wistful eagerness which touched Laline deeply. "You see," he added, apologetically, "this is not a fashionable call, and there are no fashionable people to meet you. And when I see young people about me without their hats it makes me feel for the time that they are not only visitors, but my own family."
Long before he had finished speaking Laline had removed her hat, much to Wallace's delight, and had confided it to him to place on one side for her, thus enabling him to feast his eyes upon her white brow and soft hair, waving in Madonna-like fashion over her temples and across the tips of her little pink ears.
"Have you no women-relations at all, then?" Mrs. Vandeleur inquired.
Alexander Wallace sighed and shook his head.