“Shall I see your young brother-in-law again in America, Mrs. Garden?” Lord Wilfrid appealed to his hostess openly.
“It would be quite like you,” she said with a smile. “But if you do come to Vineclad again, pray come in your proper person.”
“No objection to that, as long as you do not find my proper person improper,” laughed Lord Wilfrid, evidently relieved at not receiving a stern prohibition to return to Vineclad in any guise.
Win got his hat, Lord Kelmscourt went out to the door, and here the elder and younger man shook hands and said good-bye all over again.
“Nice boy,” Lord Wilfrid said, turning to Mary, who happened to be near him. “Though, speaking of your uncle, I suppose one should call him a man!”
“He’s only a half-uncle, my father’s half-brother. It’s the other half that is a man; at home Win is only a dear big boy.”
“I’m going immediately, Mrs. Garden,” said Lord Wilfrid, as Mrs. Garden joined them, anticipating her possible orders. “Before I go, please show me your garden.”
“Come, Mary,” said Mrs. Garden, but Mary’s heart failed her when she remembered that Lord Wilfrid had not seen her mother for a moment, except in the car and at the table.
“I’ve got to find Jane, madrina,” she said, blind to her mother’s appeal to be supported. And she ran away not a little perturbed. For perhaps Lord Kelmscourt would seize the chance which she had given him, and plead his cause, and perhaps Mrs. Garden would relent! Mary trembled to think that her girl-mother might go the way of girls, and leave her new-found daughters desolate.
When, an hour later, Mrs. Garden and her guest returned to the house, Mary, Jane, and Florimel, watching anxiously behind the closed blinds of the upper hall, clutched one another jubilantly. Lord Wilfrid looked serious, far from glad, and their mother was as blithely unruffled as ever.