“I wouldn’t care a pin if Mrs. Devar wasn’t waiting for me,” whispered Cynthia, whose mental attitude during this mishap on the Wye contrasted strangely with her alarm when Marigny’s motor collapsed on the Mendips.
“Mrs. Devar is the real problem,” laughed Medenham. “We must find some means of soothing her agitation.”
“Why don’t you like her?”
“That is one of the things I wish to explain later.”
“She has been horrid to you, I know, but——”
“I am beginning to think that I owe her a debt of gratitude I can never repay.”
“What will happen if that wretched ferryboat is on the wrong side of the river?”
Medenham took her arm again, for the road was dark where there were trees.
“You are not to think about it,” he said. “I have been doing all the talking to-night. Now tell me something of your wanderings abroad.”
These two already understood each other without the spoken word. He respected her desire to sheer off anything that might be construed as establishing a new relationship between them, and she appreciated his restraint to the full. They discussed foreign lands and peoples until the road bent toward the river again and the ferry was reached—at a point quite half a mile below the hotel.