'Perhaps the temptation is not large enough,' said Dr. Rylance. 'If I had been Brian Wendover, and the owner of Kingthorpe Abbey, you would hardly have rejected me so lightly.'
Ida crimsoned to the roots of her hair. The shaft went home. It was as if Dr. Rylance had been inside her mind and knew all the foolish day-dreams she had dreamed in the idle summer afternoons, under the spreading cedar branches, or beside the lake in the Abbey grounds. Before she had time to express her resentment a cluster of young Wendovers came sweeping down the greensward at her side, and in the next minute Blanche was hanging upon her bodily, like a lusty parasite strangling a slim young tree.
'Darling,' cried Blanche gaspingly, 'such news. Brian has come—cousin Brian—after all, though he thought he couldn't. But he made a great effort, and he has come all the way as fast as he could tear to be here on Bessie's birthday. Isn't it too jolly?'
'All the way from Norway?' asked Ida.
'Yes,' said Urania, who had been carried down the hill with the torrent of Wendovers, 'all the way from Norway. Isn't it nice of him?'
Blanche's frank face was brimming over with smiles. The boys were all laughing. How happy Brian's coming had made them!
Ida looked at them wonderingly.
'How pleased you all seem!' she said. 'I did not know you were so fond of your cousin. I thought it was the other you liked.'
'Oh, we like them both,' said Blanche, 'and it is so nice of Brian to come on purpose for Bessie's birthday. Do come and see him. He is on the top of the hill talking to Bess; and the kettle boils, and we are just going to have tea. We are all starving.'
'After such a dinner!' exclaimed Ida.