"It's all your fault, darling," she murmured. "It's all through you. You've been and lost me my character, Paul. Oh, my dear, my dear! What a joke! If the beasts only knew you?"
A foot grated upon the sand behind her. She turned and saw Sir Bryan, very fresh and smart and youthful in his tweeds and breeches.
"Good-morning, Miss Barbour. I'm sent to call you into breakfast."
"I never heard the gong."
"You don't hear it from this side." He came nearer and drew in great breaths of the cold, pure air. "Feeding's a bore, isn't it, a morning like this? I like houses where everything's kept hot and you eat any time; don't you?"
"I don't know. I haven't visited very much."
She tried to meet his new impersonal tone with perfunctory brightness; but Bryan knew how a woman looks who hasn't slept.
"You look tired," he said. "I'm afraid I worried you a bit last night."
"I did think you a little—a little——"
"Disrespectful, eh?" Lumsden hazarded. He had that useful sort of tact in conversation which consists in supplying the word that suits one's own purpose best.