Again there fell a little silence. And the birds twittered, and the sun shone, and the butterflies flitted over the heather, and a thousand words rose to John’s lips, only to remain unspoken, because the time had somehow leaped to about a million of years ahead. It was not the moment, he knew it was not the moment, and yet—and yet— Well, at any rate she was there beside him on the heather. The faintest scent of perfume—violets, perhaps? came to him from her garments. For all his outward calm, for all his level, easy, careless voice, his heart was in a tumult.
“You and Mr. Elmore are dining with us tonight,” she reminded him on a sudden.
“I had not forgotten.” John’s voice was full of assurance.
“You know,” quoth she tentatively, “that you are to meet—Sir David Delancey.” There had been the fraction of a pause before the name.
“I know,” said John, his eyes clouding.
“My grandmother felt it might ease the situation,” she explained. There was a sudden little note of confidence in the words. “A dinner en famille might be, indeed must be, a trifle difficult.”
“I quite understand.”
She pulled at a sprig of heather.
“Father Maloney has seen him,” she said abruptly. “He—he seems favourably impressed.”
“I, too, have seen him,” owned John. It was not altogether easy to make the statement.