He laughed. "I wouldn't be the first of us—and this wouldn't be the first time. There's whimsy in the blood. Well—out with it. Let me know the worst."
Vera stopped. "I intend to do it sitting. We've heaps of time. None of the others want us."
Urquhart hit the rock with his staff. "That's the point, my child. Do they—or don't they?"
"You believe," Vera said, "that Lucy is in love with you."
Urquhart replied, "I know that she was."
"There you have the pull over me," she answered. "I haven't either your confidence or hers. All I can tell you is that now she isn't." Urquhart was all attention. "Do you mean, she has told you anything?"
"Good Heavens," Vera scoffed, "what do you take me for? Do you think I don't know by the looks of her? If you weren't infatuated you'd know better than I do."
"My dear girl," Urquhart said, with a straight look at her, "the fact is, I am infatuated."
"I'm sorry for you. You've made a mess of it. But I must say that I'm not at all sorry for her. Don't you suppose that she is the sort to find the world well lost for your beaux yeux. Far from that. She'd wilt like a rose in a window-box."
"I'd take her into fairy-land," said Urquhart. "She should walk in the dawn. She wouldn't feel her feet."