“I didn’t intend to be funny. And I’m not joking. I’m perfectly serious.”
“Then you were never more mistaken in your life.”
“Mistaken?”—with childlike inquiry.
“In what you said just now.”
Forrester’s eyes danced wickedly.
“I say such a lot of things,” he complained. “If you can specify which particular thing, now?”
“You know which I mean, perfectly well,” protested Ann indignantly. “That I—that you—what you said just now about ‘belonging’!” She brought it out with a rush.
“I meant it.”
They were alone in the room. The others, conducted by Robin, had all trooped out to inspect what Lady Susan gaily insisted upon referring to as the “Cottage Poultry Farm,” and distantly through the open window came the fluttered cackling of the White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, resentful of this unaccountable intrusion of strangers into their domain.
Brett laid his hand suddenly on Ann’s arm and thrust his face near hers.