"Two girls to tea," she commented; "who are they, Mabel?"
"Well, I really don't know," Mabel admitted, nobly untruthful, out of a desire not to prejudice Mrs. Grant from the beginning. "I fancy Dick met them at Sevenoaks, anyway, he was having lunch with them yesterday."
"And dinner every day this week," supplemented Mrs. Grant. "Did he meet them on his travels?"
"He did not say so," Mabel answered, "only just that he was seeing a good deal of them at Sevenoaks, and I thought it would be nice to ask them out here."
"Mabel," said Mrs. Grant, with intense seriousness; she lifted her eyes from her work and fixed them on her daughter, "do you not think it is very probable that Dick has become entangled? I have even wondered lately whether he may not be secretly married to some awful woman."
"Dear mother," laughed Mabel—though the first part of the sentence rather hurt her, it was the truth—"why secretly married? What has Dick done to deserve such a suspicion?"
"His manner has been peculiar ever since the first night he came home," Mrs. Grant explained, "and he has an uneasy way of trying not to be left with me alone. The other day I thought of going to see him very early in the morning when I happened to be unable to sleep, and, Mabel, his door was locked!"
"If you had knocked he would probably have opened it," Mabel suggested. "It is hardly likely that he keeps his wife concealed upstairs, is it?"
"You may laugh," Mrs. Grant spoke with an expression of hurt pride on her countenance, "but surely a mother can see things in her son which other people miss. Dick is in love, and not nicely in love, or he would not be so shy about it."
Further discussion was prevented, for at this point the motor, bringing Dick and his guests, came round the sweep of the drive and drew up at the front door. Mabel went across the lawn to meet them. She had schooled herself to this meeting for Dick's sake, and to please him; she could not, however, pretend to any pleasure in the prospect. It was only natural that she should view Joan with distrust. Dick had allowed himself to become entangled; all unknowingly Mother had expressed the matter in a nutshell.