“You!” was all she said.
She held out her hand before she turned to speak to Mrs. Radcliffe. It was a relief to both when dinner was announced.
Wyllard sat next to his hostess, and was not sorry that he was called upon to take part only in casual general conversation. He thought once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him. It was nearly an hour after the dinner when Mrs. Radcliffe left them alone in the drawing-room.
“You have, no doubt, a good deal to talk about, and you needn’t join us until you’re ready,” she said. “The Major always reads the London papers after dinner.”
Agatha sat in a low chair near the hearth, and it occurred to Wyllard, who took a place opposite her, that she was too delicate and dainty, too over-cultivated, in fact, to marry Hawtrey. This was rather curious, since he had hitherto regarded his comrade as a typical well-educated Englishman; but it now seemed to him that there was a certain streak of coarseness in Gregory. The man, it suddenly flashed upon him, was self-indulgent, and the careless ease of manner, which he had once liked, was too much in evidence.
Agatha turned to him.
“I understand that Gregory is recovering rapidly?” she said.
Wyllard assured her that Hawtrey was convalescing, and Agatha said quietly, “He wants me to go out to him.”
Wyllard felt that if a girl of that sort had promised to marry him he would not have sent for her, but would have come in person, if he had been compelled to pledge his last possessions, or crawl to the tideway on his hands and knees. For all that he was ready to defend his friend.
“I’m afraid it’s necessary,” he said. “Gregory was quite unfit for such a journey when I left, and he must be ready to commence the season’s campaign with the first of the spring. Our summer is short, you see, and with our one-crop farming it’s indispensable to get the seed in early. In fact, he will be badly behind as it is.”