“This sort of thing can’t go on,” he argued with himself. “At any minute now I shall be taking her in my arms and kissing her, and that will not be fair to Cynthia, who is proud and queenly, and who will strive against the dictates of her own heart because it is not seemly that she should wed her father’s paid servant. So I must tell her, to-day—perhaps during the run home from Hereford, perhaps to-night. But, dash it all! that will break up our tour. One ought to consider the world we live in; Cynthia will be one of its leaders, and it will never do to have people saying that Viscount Medenham became engaged to Cynthia Vanrenen while acting as the lady’s chauffeur during a thousand-mile run through the West of England and Wales. Now, what am I to do?”
The answer came from a bedroom window that overlooked the veranda.
“Mr. Fitzroy!”
He knew as he looked up that Cynthia dared not face him again, for her voice was too exquisitely subtle in its modulations not to betray its owner’s disappointment before she uttered another word.
“I am very sorry,” she said rapidly, “but I feel I ought not to leave Mrs. Devar until she is better, so I mean to remain indoors all day. I shall not require the car before nine o’clock to-morrow. If you like to visit Hereford, go at any time that suits your convenience.”
She seemed to regret the curtness of her speech, though indeed she was raging inwardly because of certain barbed shafts planted in her breast by Mrs. Devar’s faint protests, and tried to mitigate the blow she had inflicted by adding, with a valiant smile:
“For this occasion only, Jupiter must content himself with Mercury as a companion.”
“If I had Jove’s power——” he began wrathfully.
“If you were Cynthia Vanrenen, you would do exactly what she is doing,” she cried, and fled from the window.