Poor Angus Stuart! Lily could not see into his heart—could not divine, closely as she felt in sympathy with him, how he longed to be with her, far away from all these tiresome people. All he said was: “Will you be coming down to the town—I mean alone, as you used to do—during the next two or three days?”
Lily shook her head regretfully. “I’m afraid not! But Beppo Polda isn’t going to stay very long at La Solitude. He’s mixed up in some big money scheme, and he will have to go back to Rome in a few days.”
The young man’s face darkened as she mentioned Beppo, and Lily saw the change in his face.
“It’s all right!” she said quickly. “He’s been really very nice. But—but I do wish you’d let me tell him!”
“No,” he said sharply. “I beg you not to do that——” and then under his breath he whispered the word, “darling”; adding, “You see, I don’t want anyone to know till you’ve heard from your uncle. Oh, Lily——” and then he muttered, “Confound it!” ferociously for the Countess was coming towards them with a very determined look in her face.
“Lily!” she exclaimed. “I wish you would explain to me this strange game? I feel that you, dear child, with your clear mind, will be able to make me understand it.”
Angus Stuart scowled at the speaker, and she caught his look and put a black mark against him—or, rather, she added a black mark to the several she had already registered with regard to this disagreeable, plain, young Scotsman who apparently thought he had a chance of beating her son at the great game at which Beppo had always been an expert and a lucky player, and he, Angus Stuart, a mere tyro—the human game called Love.
Why, even if Lily had received and sent on that peculiar dry statement and formal covering letter which she, the Countess, had burnt in the empty grate of her bedroom yesterday, there was time enough for Lily and Beppo to be engaged and married ten times over before an answer could have come to it from Tom Fairfield.
The only perfectly happy and contented member of the whole party was Hercules Popeau.
He was intensely interested in what he regarded as the drama now being unfolded before his eyes. He had no doubt at all that the Count and Countess Polda intended their son to marry Lily Fairfield. He was equally convinced that they would fail. Also, though Angus Stuart had not said anything to him, his practical refusal to discuss what he and Lily had talked about during their long night walk to La Solitude, made him certain that something had been settled between the two young people.