“Can’t you give your aunt the slip and come off with us now, just as you are?” he asked in a low voice.
Lily shook her head. “Aunt Cosy would never forgive me! She’d be awfully shocked if I were to do that after what she said.”
“I suppose she would,” said the young man reluctantly. “Still, she can’t keep you cooped up here all the time. Do make her understand that in England girls go about by themselves, Miss Fairfield.”
“I’ll try and make her understand it,” said Lily, smiling, “but it won’t be easy. She’s tremendously determined.”
“I can see that. I hope they’re nice to you?” he added a little anxiously. And he looked at her with one of the quick, shrewd looks to which she had become accustomed during their long journey together.
But this time there was something added—a something which made Lily’s heart beat. She asked herself inconsequently what exactly he had meant when he said that he felt as if he had known her a lifetime? But all she said was:
“They are very kind to me in their own way, and I think I’m going to be quite happy here.”
Twice, while she and the young man had been talking apart together, she had seen Uncle Angelo look towards them uncomfortably, hesitatingly, almost as if he thought he ought to cut across their conversation.
“Can’t you come down for a game of tennis early to-morrow morning? Do! I could come and fetch you any time you fix.”
Perhaps M. Popeau heard the whispered invitation, for he said to Uncle Angelo: “By the way, it has suddenly occurred to me, could not you and Mademoiselle lunch with me to-morrow?”