“What makes it so simple?”
She hesitated a moment.
“The fact that I ask you to stay.”
“You ask me?” he repeated, softly.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, “one does n’t say those things twice!”
She turned away, and they went back to her mother, who gave Bernard a wonderful little look of half urgent, half remonstrant inquiry. As they left the garden he walked beside Mrs. Vivian, Angela going in front of them at a distance. The elder lady began immediately to talk to him of Gordon Wright.
“He ‘s not coming back for another week, you know,” she said. “I am sorry he stays away so long.”
“Ah yes,” Bernard answered, “it seems very long indeed.”
And it had, in fact, seemed to him very long.
“I suppose he is always likely to have business,” said Mrs. Vivian.