"I followed your lead, sir," said Harry meekly. "But if we are to talk sense—when shall we start for France?"
"You shall know when I know."
And on that they came to the top of the hill and the gates of the Hall. The wet weather had yielded to St. Martin's summer. It was a day of gentle silver-gold sunlight and benign air. With her companion, Mrs. Weston, Miss Lambourne was walking in the garden. She met the gentlemen at a turn of the drive by rampant sweetbriers. "Here's our knight of the rueful countenance, and faith, on Rosinante, poor jade," she patted Harry's aged carriage horse. "Oh, and he has brought with him Solomon in all his glory," she made a wonderful curtsy to the splendours of Colonel Boyce. "Now, who would have dreamt Don Quixote's father was Solomon?"
"I suppose I take after my mother, ma'am," Harry said meekly. "It's a hope which often consoles me."
"Why, they say Solomon had something of a variety in wives, and among them—"
Colonel Boyce dismounted with so much noise that the jest was hardly heard and the end of it altogether lost.
"You did not tell me"—Mrs. Weston was speaking and seemed to find it difficult—"Alison, you did not tell me the gentlemen were coming." It occurred to Harry that she looked very pale and ill.
"Why, Weston; dear, I could not tell if they would keep troth." She began to hum:
"Men were deceivers ever,
One foot on sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never."
"Nay, ma'am, sigh no more for here are we," Colonel Boyce said brusquely.