Urquhart's eyes took a chill tinge—a hard and pebbly stare. "I don't know what you mean," he said.
"Men always say that, especially when they know very well. Of course I mean the Macartneys. You didn't suppose I was thinking of the Poplolly?" The Poplolly, I regret to say, was Francis Lingen, whom Vera abhorred. The term was opprobrious, and inexact.
But Urquhart shrouded himself in ice. "Perhaps you might explain yourself," he said.
Vera was not at all sure that she would. "You make it almost impossible, you know."
They were all out in a party, and were to meet the luncheon and the boys, who had gone round in the boat. As parties will have it, they had soon scattered. Lingen had taken Margery Dacre to himself, Lucy was with her husband. Urquhart, now he came to think of it, began to understand that the sceptre was out of his hands. The pass, worn out of the shelving rock by centuries of foot-work, wound itself about the breasting cliffs like a scarf; below them lay the silver fiord, and upon that, a mere speck, they could see the motor-boat, with a wake widening out behind her like parallel lines of railway.
Urquhart saw in his mind that he would be a fool to quarrel with Vera. She was not on his side, he could feel; but he didn't despair of her. One way of putting her off him forever was to allow her to think him a fool. That he could not afford.
"Don't turn against me for a mannerism, my dear," he said.
"I turn against you, if at all, for a lack of mannerism," said Vera briskly. "It's too bad of you. Here I am as so much ballast for your party, and when I begin to make myself useful, you pretend I'm not there. But I am there, you know."
"I was cross," he said, "because I'm rather worried, and I thought you were going to worry me more."
"Well, maybe that I am,"—she admitted that. "But I don't like to see a sharp-faced man make a donkey of himself. The credit of the family is at stake."