“I will take the seat,” said the young lady.
She leant back and looked across the garden.
“That is our tennis lawn,” said Pen, pointing in the distance. “It used to be the old garden, with the queer dragons and beasts and birds cut out of the box trees. Doesn’t it make a beautiful tennis lawn? Wouldn’t you like to see it? Clay is so proud of it.”
“No, I shouldn’t like to see it,” said Angela very gently.
She turned those misty, unfathomable eyes of hers towards the little girl.
“Don’t you understand,” she said impulsively, and she laid her slender hand on Pen’s arm, “that the old garden was more to me than the tennis lawn is to you?” Pen felt a vague, very vague sort of flutter at her heart. She did not know that she understood, but she felt puzzled and uneasy.
“Why have you come here to-day?” was her next question.
“I am waiting for my friend, Marcia Aldworth. I hope to take her back with me to-night—that is if Mrs Aldworth’s mind is relieved.”
“But what has happened?” said Pen. “Is Mrs Aldworth ill again?”
“Not exactly, but she is anxious. Perhaps you can tell us something. It is Nesta.”