Mrs. Morres was looking benignantly, for her, at Sir Robin Drummond.
"Well, I must say I'm pleased to see you," she said. "It's very handsome of you, too, to give up the affairs of the nation for an old woman like me. How do you suppose things are getting on without you?"
"The House is not sitting this afternoon. You know it rises for the Easter vacation to-morrow."
"On Thursday I go down to Hazels. I wanted that bad person, Mary Gray, to come with me. She says she has to work at her book. Did you ever hear such stuff and nonsense? As though the world can't get on without one young woman's book. I told her she could do it at Hazels. She says she couldn't—that she'll have to be out all day long. London will not tempt her out, she says. Is she to go bending her back and dimming her eyes while the lambs are at play in the fields and the primroses thick in the woods?"
"She's an obstinate person, Mrs. Morres. When she has made up her mind to do a thing——"
"Ah! you know her pretty well."
"We first met about nine years ago."
"Dear me! I had no idea that you were such old friends. I thought you met first in this house."
"Lady Anne Hamilton, the old lady who adopted Miss Gray, was my mother's friend."
He said nothing about the fact that twelve hours ago he had not known Mary Gray for the child he had played with for one afternoon, nor of the long gap between that occasion and their next meeting. Not from any disingenuousness; but he had a feeling that he liked to keep that meeting of long ago to himself.