"You mean when I lost my way, and you had to tramp the shoes off your dear little feet. Brave little minx, I shall never forget how plucky you were, and how you kept back the tears when your lips quivered with pain."
Once launched upon reminiscences of that golden summer there was no gap in their talk till the lions' heads were frowning at them on the threshold of Vera's home.
She was flushed with her walk, and the colour in cheeks that were generally pale gave a new brightness to her eyes. That long talk of her childish days had taken her out of her present life. She was a child again, happy in the present moment, without the wisdom that looks before and after.
"Good-bye," said Claude; and then, pausing, with his hand on the moody lion, "if you had some vague idea of asking me to dinner, it would be a kindness to give shape to the notion, for I shan't get a dinner anywhere else. My mother is in the country, and a solitary meal at a restaurant is worse than a funeral."
Vera hesitated, with a faint blush, not being able utterly to forget her determination to keep Claude Rutherford out of her daily life.
"Lady Okehampton expects to find me alone," she said.
"But you have Susie Amphlett?"
"Susie invited herself."
"As I am doing. Three women! What a funereal feast; as bad as Domitian's black banquet. Your aunt dotes upon me, and so does Susan. You will score by having secured me. You can say I threw over a long engagement for the sake of meeting them. I dare say there is some solemn dinner invitation stuck in my chimney glass. I often forget such things."
The doors were flung open, and the suave man in black and his liveried lieutenants awaited their mistress's entrance.