“I rather like him,” observed Lily.
Captain Stuart lifted his hat and walked away.
Then he suddenly came back. “As you can’t come to lunch, could you come to dinner to-night, and go to the Club?” He said these very simple words in rather a fierce tone, and Lily suddenly felt as if she must obey him.
“I think I can manage that!” she exclaimed, “Though it is impossible to tell what Aunt Cosy will or will not allow me to do.”
As she saw a look of annoyance, almost of anger, flash across the young man’s face, she added hurriedly: “Of course, I am now quite free to come and go as I like in the daytime, but I don’t know if she would consider it the thing for me to go out to dinner by myself. However, I can but try.”
“Are you going back now at once to the Hôtel Hidalgo?”
“No,” said Lily frankly. “I am going to call on the English chaplain and ask him if he can’t find me something to do. There must be voluntary work of some sort where I could put in a few hours each day.”
“But you came here to rest!” he exclaimed, in a dismayed tone.
Lily laughed. “I feel quite well again now. But sometimes La Solitude gets on my nerves. I can’t imagine how an energetic woman like Aunt Cosy can stand it as she does. She wouldn’t if she wasn’t so fond of her husband—they are wrapped up in one another. The real reason why she was so awfully angry with me about Mr. Ponting was because he was so upset. She really is a devoted wife!”
She felt that the man walking by her side had a deep, she thought an unreasonable, prejudice against the Countess Polda. She wanted to show him that there was something good in Aunt Cosy, something better than he thought for.