In the early afternoon of Thursday, David Mosscrop walked apart on shaded gravel-paths, beneath arches of roses and the feathered canopy of cedars high above, with Adele by his side.
“Oh, it’s all right. The waiter will come out and tell us when it is ready,” he said reassuringly, in comment upon her backward glance. “I want to speak with you. There was no such thing as a word with you by yourself on the road.”
“Why, we talked every mortal minute,” she protested.
“Ah yes, we talked, but I don’t recall that anything was said.”
“I daresay my conversation is empty to the last degree,” she observed; “but I am usually spared such frank statements of the fact.”
“Ah, but I want to be thought of as something a little different from the usual,” urged David.
“Your efforts in that direction have been extraordinarily successful. Pray, do not imagine that they are unappreciated. I admit freely that you seem to have quite exhausted the unusual, my Lord.”
“No; I’ve still got something up my sleeve,” said David, lightly enough. But the tone in which she had uttered those final two words caught his attention. They carried a suggestion of emphasis which fell outside the bounds of genial banter. Meditating upon it he stole a covert glance at her, and encountered two wide-awake black eyes intently scrutinising him in turn. “It was about that I wished to consult you,” he added, conscious of an embarrassed tongue.
“Won’t it be better to stick to scenery?” she asked. Yes, there was undoubtedly a mocking touch in her voice. “That is so safe a subject. This dear old hotel here, now, how perfectly satisfying it is! Those wonderful trees out in front, and the white chalk hill behind, and this garden, and then the comfort and charm of everything inside, and the thought that people have been coming here for hundreds of years, or is it thousands?—it is so different from anything we have in America—even in Kentucky. And then the whole drive from London—through such delicious country, all so rich and smooth and neatly packed together, and so full of the notion that people are all the while planting and pruning and admiring every inch of it that you can’t help feeling affectionately toward it yourself! Perhaps there is a certain hint of the artificial about it, but somehow that seems rather in keeping with the day than otherwise, doesn’t it, my Lord?”
While he hesitated about an answer, she touched him on the arm. “Here are papa and Mr. Linkhaw coming along after us—probably to tell us luncheon is ready. Shan’t we wait for them?”