'We are down earlier than usual this morning,' said she.
'All the better.'
'Why?'
'I want so particularly to talk to you,' said he, with all the softness he could assume.
'And I with you,' said Olive, with a frankness that was a curious mistake. 'You leave us soon, I believe?'
'Yes.'
'For London?'
'For London,' he replied, mechanically, as it were.
'I thought you came to stay out the grouse-shooting?'
'Till the tenth of December! I have not been asked,' he replied, gnawing his yellow moustache; and then, after a pause, added, 'would you wish that I stayed?'