“I don’t care tuppence what he believes,” said Medenham, giving her a reassuring hug. “Indeed, I have a mind to write and ask him how much he owes in that hotel. Don’t you see, my dear, that if it hadn’t been for Marigny there was a chance that I might have left you at Bristol.”
“Never!” cooed Cynthia.
“Well, now I have got you, I am beginning to imagine all sorts of terrible possibilities which might have parted us. I remember thinking, when my foot slipped....”
“Oh, don’t!” she murmured. “I can’t bear to hear of that. Sometimes, in Calais, I awoke screaming, and then I knew I had seen it in my dreams.... There, you have disarranged my hat!... But I don’t think much of your budget, anyhow; mine is a great deal more to the point. My father told me this morning that he is sure he will feel very lonely now. He never meant, he said, to put anyone in my dear mother’s place, but he will miss me so greatly—that, perhaps, Mrs. Leland——”
“By Jove,” cried Medenham, “that will be splendid! I like Mrs. Leland. At one time, do you know, I rather fancied she might become my step-mother, now it seems I shall have to greet her as a mother-in-law. She was bound to come into the family one way or another. When is it to be?”
Cynthia laughed delightedly.
“Father looked so confused when I asked him. Say, wouldn’t it be a joke if Simmonds brought them to Scarland Towers one day, and they were announced by some solemn footman as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vanrenen’?”
“Cynthia, you know,” he teased her.
“I don’t know, but I am a good guesser,” she said.
And she was.