"Allan is going to see me home in time to give father his tiffin, and I think you and Mr. Wornock will like to have the day to yourselves. I shall come for my organ lesson to-morrow at eleven, unless you tell me to stop away—
"Ever, dear Mrs. Wornock, your own
"SUZETTE."
"Pretty tactful soul! Of course we want to be alone," said Geoffrey, reading the note over his mother's shoulder. "First you shall give me the best lunch that Discombe can provide; and then we will drive round and look at everything. And we will devote the evening to de Beriot. I must go up to town by an early train to-morrow."
"Running away from me so soon, Geoffrey?"
"Now, mother, it's base ingratitude to say that. I've hardly given myself breathing time since I landed at Brindisi, because I wanted to push home to you, first of the very first. I shall only be in London a day or two. I want to see what kind of horses are being sold at Tattersall's, and I may run down to look at the Belhus hunters. Remember I haven't a horse to ride."
"There are your old hunters, Geoffrey?"
"Three dear old crocks. Admirable as pensioners, not to carry eleven stone to hounds. No, mother, I'm afraid there's nothing in your stables that will be good for more than a cover-hack."
Mrs. Wornock sighed faintly in the midst of her bliss. She had a womanly horror of hunting and all its perils, and in her heart of hearts was always on the side of the fox; but she knew that without hunting and shooting Discombe Manor would very soon pall upon her son, dilettante and Jack-of-all-trades though he was. Music alone—passionately as he loved it—would not keep him contented.
Allan and Suzette strolled home under the bright blue sky. These late days in October were the Indian summer of the year, a season in which it was a joy to live, especially in a land where the smoke from domestic hearths curling upward here and there in silvery wreaths from wood fires, only suggested homeliness and warmth, not filth and fog. They sauntered slowly homeward through the rustic lanes, and their talk was naturally of the new arrival.
"Is he the kind of young man you expected him to be?" asked Suzette.