“Who is that you are speaking of, father?” she asked, though with a listless air that Medenham had never seen during any minute of those five happy days.
“The Marquis of Scarland—the man from whom I bought some cattle a few years ago,” he said, trusting to the directness of the reply to carry it through unchallenged.
Cynthia’s brows puckered in a reflective frown.
“That is odd,” she murmured.
“What is odd?” asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the periodical to hide a smile of embarrassment.
“Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this country. They call towns after men and men after towns.”
She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who was married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but checked the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did not seem to wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but she did not gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject on that occasion.
Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia’s thoughts brooded again on poets and lonely graves, and the danger passed.
Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter she wrote from Symon’s Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both agreed that the comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was rapidly losing its significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs. Leland’s advent had thrust her into the background, for the American widow was rich, good-looking, and cultured, and the flow of small talk between the newcomer and Cynthia left her as hopelessly out of range as used to be the case when that domineering Medenham would lean back in the car and say things beyond her comprehension, or murmur them to Cynthia if she happened to be sitting by his side.