Why could he not have asked directly after Leonore, upon the mention of her name? Why did he even wait for that? It would have been so simple, so natural, to have hoped she was well or hoped she was not ill—hoped something, anything, when the tea was openly sent her elsewhere. The opportunity was obvious; and as obviously the tiresome boy had missed it. She contented herself, however, with a grim smile.
"I expect Leo was somewhere out of sight." After a minute's reflection, Val advanced the above as its result. "They couldn't take her her tea if she wasn't there, you know."
"It seems improbable, certainly." Mrs. Purcell's lips twitched again.
"Improbable, ma'am?" He was flustered on the instant. "Why, ma'am, where would have been the sense of it? Unless there was some one to take tea to—bless me, grandmother—why should Sue have sent the poor footy off on a fool's errand? She rang for him, too," he summed up conclusively.
"Listen, Val; if you are not going to see Leonore when you call at her father's house, if she is to be kept in the background there, you must meet her elsewhere."
"But I don't think she goes elsewhere. Nobody's seen her, for I've asked."
"Oh, you have asked?" She looked pleased; she had not expected so much of him.
"Asked?—I've asked wherever I go, and not a soul has set eyes on her. I'll tell you how I do it. I say in an easy kind of way, not as if I cared, you know, but just like this, 'Any one seen Mrs. Stubbs yet?'—I call her 'Mrs. Stubbs' not to seem too familiar—and, what do you think? they laughed—Jimmy Tod and Merivale laughed—and Jimmy poked me with his whip, and said: 'If you haven't, old fellow, no one has'. Of course they know I'm intimate with the Bolderos,"—and he drew up his collar with an air.
"Why did you not mention this before, Val?"
Val looked foolish. For the life of him he could not think why, the truth being that he had forgotten, but never supposed he could forget.