"Perhaps Lady Gertrude is keeping her to dinner," said Lord St. John. "It's very probable." As he spoke he held out his hands to the fire—withered old hands that looked somehow frailer than their wont.
Kitty shook her head.
"No. She—I don't think she enjoyed her visit overmuch, and, when she came back she went out cycling—to 'work it off,'" she said.
"Where did she go?" inquired Penelope.
"To Tintagel. I told her she wouldn't have time enough to get there and back before dinner. Never mind. We'll begin, and I'll order something to be kept hot for her."
Accordingly they all adjourned to the dining-room and dinner proceeded in its usual leisurely fashion, although the gay chatter that generally accompanied it was absent. Everyone seemed conscious of a certain uneasiness.
"I wish young Nan would come back," remarked Barry at last, looking up abruptly from the fish he was dissecting. A shade of anxiety clouded his lazy blue eyes. "I hope she's not come a cropper down one of these confounded hills."
He voiced the restless feeling of suspense which was beginning to pervade the whole party.
"What time did she start, Kit?" he went on.
"About five o'clock, I should think, or soon after."