It was a full minute before the girl answered, "Oh yes," she said hurriedly and emphatically. "It was delightful. I—I was not thinking."
"That is just what you were doing. A penny for your thoughts."
Again there was a silence. Evidently Lucy was strongly tempted to make a clean breast of it.
"I am in my father's black books," she said at last.
Mona looked at her searchingly. That the statement was true, she did not doubt; but that this was the sole cause of Lucy's evident depression, she did not believe for a moment.
"How have you contrived to get there?" she asked.
"It is not such a remarkable feat as you think. I went to Monte Carlo with the Munros."
"Did he object?"
"Awfully! You see, when I came to write about it, I thought I would wait and tell them when I got home: but Mr Wilson, one of the churchwardens, saw me there, and the story leaked out."
"But you did not play?"