It was now four o'clock. At home Boringdon would have had to wait another hour for tea, and so would any passing guest who could be regarded as an intimate friend, but here, at the Grange, it appeared as if by magic a few minutes after the visitor had sat down opposite Mrs. Kemp, and Oliver soon felt heartened up to approach what even he felt to be a rather difficult subject.
The kind woman whose aid he was about to invoke made it easy for him to begin, for she was very cordial; thanks to Boringdon, Lucy had thoroughly enjoyed the ball at Halnakeham Castle, and the mother felt grateful for even this small mercy. During the last two days she had reminded herself more than once that affairs of the heart, when not interfered with unduly, have an odd way of coming right.
"I need not ask," he said, rather awkwardly, "if Lucy is no worse for the ball."
Mrs. Kemp was not sure whether she liked to hear Boringdon call her daughter Lucy; he had only begun doing so lately, and she had not thought it necessary to mention it to the General. There was still a certain coolness between Oliver and Lucy's father—they avoided each other's company.
He went on without waiting for an answer: "Mrs. Rebell seems to have found it a trying experience, and yet she did not dance at all. I went to the Priory this morning, and she was too tired to come down."
"But then she came back so much later than you all did. I understand that she stayed on with the Fletchings party, and I heard some of their carriages going through the village at four o'clock in the morning!"
Boringdon looked at her with quick suspicion. He had just learnt from Miss Vipen of Berwick's solitary drive with Mrs. Rebell. But the remark Mrs. Kemp had just made was wholly innocent in intention; she never dealt in innuendoes.
"I wish," he said, impulsively, "that you would get to know Mrs. Rebell! Everyone else in the neighbourhood has called on her; have you any reason for not doing so?"
She hesitated, then said slowly, "No. No real reason, except, of course, that we have never received, during all the years we have been here, any mark of attention or civility from Madame Sampiero, whose tenants after all we are. Also I fancied, from something that Doctor McKirdy said, that Mrs. Rebell did not wish to make many acquaintances in the neighbourhood."
"It's a great pity, for she must feel very lonely, and I'm sure it would be much to her to have such friends as yourself, and as—as Lucy."