She smiled more openly now. "It is, just possible," she said. "If you feel that you can, after all, put off your departure for another day."
"Oh, of course, in that case!" he said eagerly, and added, "Besides, I must see him before I go. How long will he be away?"
"He'll be back to-morrow afternoon," she told him. "He's only going up to town in the car for the day. Haven't you heard?"
"Heard? What? No, I don't believe I've spoken to any one hardly since we came in. Has anything happened?"
"One of the periodical rumblings of the earthquake," she said.
He was alive now to this new issue. "Can't you tell me?" he asked.
She glanced round the hall and up the stairs before she said in a low voice, "He had a letter from Ken by the second post, a defiant letter, and rather rude. Ken's going to break away, he has borrowed the money to pay the worst of his debts, and leave enough over to pay his passage to South Africa. He knows some one who has a farm there and he's going to join him. Uncle Charles and Aunt Catherine are fearfully upset, of course, and it's one of those rare occasions when the foundations of the house begin to shake. I've only seen it happen before in the case of servants who have—well—broken away, but the effect is much the same, though the rumblings are deeper this time."
"Is he very annoyed?" Arthur asked. "He didn't seem upset at dinner."
"He? Oh, no! He's as calm as Fate," Eleanor said, "and as cruel."
"But why is he going up to town? Is he going to see Ken himself?"