Lady Cantourne looked up suddenly.
“What was a mistake?”
“Not asking his—opinion first.”
She turned to the table where his letter lay, and fingered the paper pensively.
“I thought, perhaps, that you had found that the other was a mistake—the engagement.”
“No,” he answered.
Lady Cantourne's face betrayed nothing. There was no sigh, of relief or disappointment. She merely looked at the clock.
“Millicent will be in presently,” she said; “she is out riding.”
She did not think it necessary to add that her niece was riding with a very youthful officer in the Guards. Lady Cantourne never made mischief from a sense of duty, or any mistaken motive of that sort. Some people argue that there is very little that is worth keeping secret; to which one may reply that there is still less worth disclosing.
They talked of other things—of his life in Africa, of his success with the Simiacine, of which discovery the newspapers were not yet weary—until the bell was heard in the basement, and thereafter Millicent's voice in the hall.