"No, indeed! I should like to take you. Mrs. Rebell has been telling me how good you were to her the other night."
And not another word was said by him or by Lucy till they exchanged a brief good-night at the Grange gate.
The Priory and its inmates settled down to a long period of quietude. With the possible exception of Lucy Kemp and Oliver Boringdon—who both called there daily—little or nothing was known in the village save that Mrs. Rebell was slowly, very slowly, getting better. No Chancton gossip could discover exactly how much she had been injured, and even Mrs. Boringdon could learn nothing definite from her son.
At last there came a day when the mistress of Chancton Cottage thought she would make a little experiment. "Is it true that Mrs. Rebell is now allowed to be downstairs?"
"Yes."
"Then you are seeing her, I suppose?"
"Yes, sometimes, for a little while."
"Parliament met last week, didn't it?" The question sounded rather irrelevant.
Oliver looked up: "Yes, mother, of course—on the fifteenth."