Lady Cantourne rose deliberately and went downstairs to tell her niece that he was in the drawing-room, leaving him there, waiting, alone.
Presently the door opened and Millicent hurried in. She threw her gloves and whip—anywhere—on the floor, and ran to him.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried.
It was very prettily done. In its way it was a poem. But while his arms were still round her she looked towards the window, wondering whether he had seen her ride up to the door accompanied by the very youthful officer in the Guards.
“And, Jack—do you know,” she went on, “all the newspapers have been full of you. You are quite a celebrity. And are you really as rich as they say?”
Jack Meredith was conscious of a very slight check—it was not exactly a jar. His feeling was that rather of a man who thinks that he is swimming in deep water, and finds suddenly that he can touch the bottom.
“I think I can safely say that I am not,” he answered.
And it was from that eminently practical point that they departed into the future—arranging that same, and filling up its blanks with all the wisdom of lovers and the rest of us.
Lady Cantourne left them there for nearly an hour, in which space of time she probably reflected they could build up as rosy a future as was good for them to contemplate. Then she returned to the drawing-room, followed by a full-sized footman bearing tea.
She was too discreet a woman—too deeply versed in the sudden changes of the human mind and heart—to say anything until one of them should give her a distinct lead. They were not shy and awkward children. Perhaps she reflected that the generation to which they belonged is not one heavily handicapped by too subtle a delicacy of feeling.