She smiled mechanically, though her senses were strained to observe Gore's attitude.
"It is very good of you! I am sure—I am sure I shall like it."
For an instant his cold glance rested curiously on her face; the next, it fell again to the book.
"I shall expect you to like it," he said enigmatically.
"What is the book?" Gore came quietly forward and stood looking down at them.
Deerehurst raised his eyes with an expression in which amusement and a faint contempt were to be read by a close observer.
"The book?" he said. "Oh, something, I am afraid, that wouldn't interest you! I don't believe the writer knew anything of far countries—or even of fishing." He paused, and deliberately turned half a dozen pages. "He only understood one thing, but that he understood perfectly."
Gore laughed.
"And may a philistine ask what it was?"
"Oh, certainly! It was love."