"I do like her. She's not very talkative—to me; but listens well. Considine will like her. Listeners are rare with him, poor dear. But you move me. I didn't know you were so far gone."
"Never mind how far I am gone, provided that I go," said Urquhart.
"Oh, at this rate, I will hasten you. I can't be bothered with a cause célèbre. But what am I to tell the lady? You must be practical, my fine man."
"Tell her that I was sent for in a hurry. Hint at the air if you think proper. I think I have said all that is necessary in the note."
The Macartneys were expected to lunch. Urquhart left his house at noon, driving himself in a motor. He disappeared in the forest, but didn't go very far.
James heard of his host's defection with impassivity and a glance of his eyeglass. "Wonder what Jimmy has shied off for?" he said to Lucy through the dressing-room door. "Aeroplaning or royalty, do you think? The ——s may have sent for him. I know he knows them. But it's characteristic. He makes a fuss about you, so that you think you're his life or death; and then you find out—not at all! You simply don't exist—that's all. What do you think?"
"I don't think that we don't exist," she said. "I think that something important has happened."
"Oh, well," said James, "one had got into the way of thinking that one was important oneself. D—d cool, I call it."
There had been a moment when Lucy knew anger; but that had soon passed. She knew that she was bitterly disappointed, and found a rueful kind of happiness in discovering how bitterly. She had reached the stage where complete happiness seems to be rooted in self-surrender. In a curious kind of way the more she suffered the more surely she could pinch herself on the chin and say, "My dear, you are caught." There was comfort in this—and Martley itself, house, gardens, woodlands, the lake, the vistas of the purple wolds of forest country, all contributed to her enchaining. Luncheon passed off well under Vera Nugent's vivacious brown eyes, which could not penetrate the gentle mask of Lucy's manner. Nugent the husband was a sleepy, good-humoured giant; Lord Considine, whose beard was too long, and jacket-sleeves much too short—as were his trousers—"his so-called trousers," as James put it in his scorn—talked fiercely about birds'-nests and engaged Lucy for the whole afternoon. This was not allowed him by his sister-in-law, who had other more sociable plans, but the good man had his pleasure of a docile listener after tea, took her for a great walk in the woods, and exhibited nearly all his treasures, though, as he said, she should have been there six weeks earlier. Alas, if she had been, she would have had a more open mind to give to the birds and their affairs.