One circumstance which had assisted greatly in the “settling down” process, as far as Ann was concerned, had been Lady Susan’s unexpectedly early return from Paris. The end of the first fortnight of July had found her back at White Windows.
“The heat was intolerable, my dear!” she told Ann. “And the dust. Not even for the sake of a new rig-out could I endure it. I thought of cool little Silverquay with the nice clean sea washing its doorstep every morning—and I bolted. Madame Antoinette has probably been, wringing her hands over my half-completed garments ever since!”
She was immensely entertained when Ann acquainted her with the identity of the man who had come to her assistance on the night of the Venetian fête, and chuckled enjoyably.
“Poor man! He must be frightfully bored at finding you here—established on his very threshold, so to speak! Confirmed misogynists should never indulge in the rescuing stunt—it’s so liable to involve them in unexpected consequences. How does he bear up under the discovery?”
“Not at all well,” acknowledged Ann ruefully. “Sometimes I think he almost regrets he didn’t let me drown comfortably in the lake while he had the chance!”
The wish she had expressed to Maria concerning her brother’s then unknown employer—that she hoped he wouldn’t make a habit of dropping in at the Cottage during the mornings—had certainly been very literally fulfilled. Rarely did Eliot Coventry put in an appearance at Oldstone Cottage at all, and if the exigencies of business matters took him there on any occasion when Robin chanced to be out, he usually contrived only to leave a note or message for him with Maria. More often than not, however, he would merely send word to him, asking him to come up and see him at Heronsmere. To Ann, puzzled and secretly somewhat piqued, it seemed as though he were studiously avoiding her. Once she mentioned the subject to Robin, introducing it casually into the conversation as though it were a matter of no moment—as is the way of women in regard to anything which touches them closely. Robin had dismissed it easily.
“Oh, you mustn’t think anything of that,” he assured her. “I told you—women don’t enter much into Coventry’s life. He’s a bit of a recluse as far as your sex is concerned.”
“He was quite friendly that first morning he came here,” objected Ann.
It was that which puzzled her—the apparently causeless change in his attitude. It was true that upon, first recognising in his agent’s sister the girl he had rescued from her difficulties on the night of the Fête des Narcisses he had appeared disconcerted and by no means pleased to renew the acquaintance. But afterwards he had thawed considerably, and had even suggested that they should be friends. And now he was behaving as though he had repented the suggestion and were determined to show her that he had. It was not that he was a snob. She was absolutely certain that the fact that the unknown heroine of the lake episode had proved to be merely the sister of his estate agent would not have the most fractional weight with Eliot Coventry. And as she sat swinging idly in the hammock, letting her thoughts stray back over her few brief meetings with him, she felt utterly baffled to interpret his behaviour.
Rather irritably she tried to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, but it persisted in occupying the foreground of her mind, and at last, in desperation, she picked up her discarded book and began to read. For a few moments she succeeded in concentrating her attention. Then gradually, as the sunlight, piercing through the branches overhead, flickered dazzlingly on the surface of the paper, the black and white of the printed page ran together in a blur of grey and her eyes closed drowsily. With an effort she forced them open, although lifting her eyelids seemed like raising leaden shutters.