Clare knew well the calm, half-passionless, and insouciant world of the Major and his 'set,' her own 'set' too; she was not surprised; she had ere now expected some such declaration or proposal as this from Desmond; but certainly, with all his inanity, and perhaps stupidity, she expected it to be made in other terms, and with more ardour and earnestness; and at the moment he spoke her memory flashed back to the same moonlight night of which Trevor Chute had thought and remembered so vividly when he parted from her father but a few hours before.
While Desmond was considering what to say next, it chanced that Clare drew her handkerchief from the Marguerite pouch, and with it the note, which fell at the feet of her visitor. Ere she was aware, he had picked it up, and saw that it was addressed to Trevor Chute.
With a greater sense of irritation, pique, and even jealousy than he thought himself capable of feeling—certainly than ever he felt before—he presented it to her, saying blandly:
'You have dropped a note, Miss Collingwood—addressed to some one at the "Rag," I think.'
'Oh, thanks,' she replied in a voice with the slightest tinge of alarm and annoyance.
'Have you many correspondents there?' he ventured to ask, with the slightest approach to a sneer, as he placed his glass in his eye.
'Only one,' replied Clare, now thoroughly irritated. 'Captain Chute—Trevor Chute—perhaps you have heard of him.'
'Yes; does Sir Carnaby know of this correspondence?'
'No,' she replied, a little defiantly.
The Major began to feel himself, as he would have phrased it, 'nowhere,' and to wish that he had not called that morning. There ensued a break in the conversation which was embarrassing to both, till Clare, who was the first to recover her equanimity, said with a smile, as she deemed some explanation due, if not to him, at least to herself: