And Alice answered with the downrightness of childhood, "I can't tell yet! I shall know that after you've been here a little while. We can't garden as much as we did then, for now the ground is too hard."
"But we can do other things," said Oliver, smiling down at her.
And Alice answered doubtfully, "Yes, I suppose we can."
They did not say very much. Oliver did not talk, as perhaps another man would have done, of his and Gillie's adventures in France and Italy. And after a comparatively short time Laura suggested that she and Alice had better now ride home.
"Will you come over to tea?" she asked.
And Oliver said yes, that he would.
"I daresay Godfrey will be back by then. He often takes the early afternoon train down from London."
But to that he made no answer, and Laura, with a rather painful sensation, saw the light suddenly die out of his face.
He came round to the stable. "I'll walk a little way with you," he said.
But she exclaimed rather hurriedly, "No, don't do that, Oliver! Stay with your mother and Lord St. Amant."