"She would if they were damp," said Vera, who could be as direct as you please. "If you think she's a wood nymph in a cage, you're very much mistaken. She's very domestic."
"I know," said the infatuate, "that I touched her." Vera tossed her head.
"I'll be bound you did. You aren't the first man to light a fire. That's what you did. You lit a fire for Macartney to warm his hand at. She's awfully in love with him."
Urquhart grew red. "That's not probable," he said.
Vera said, "It's certain. Perhaps you'll take the trouble to satisfy yourself before you take tickets for fairy-land. It's an expensive journey, I believe. Had you thought what you would be doing about Lancelot—a very nice boy?"
"No details had been arranged," said Urquhart, in his very annoying way.
"Not even that of the lady's inclinations, it appears. Well, I've warned you. I've done it with the best intentions. I suppose even you won't deny that I'm single-minded? I'm not on the side of your solicitor." That made Urquhart very angry.
"I'm much obliged to you, my dear. We'll leave my solicitor out of account for the moment." But that nettled Vera, who flamed.
"Upon my word, Jimmy, you are too sublime. You can't dispose of people quite like that. How are you to leave him out of account, when you brought his wife into it? If you ever supposed that Macartney was nothing but a solicitor, you were never more mistaken in your life—except when you thought that Lucy was a possible law-breaker."
At the moment, and from where they stood, the sea-scape and the coast-road stood revealed before and behind them for many a league. In front it descended by sharp spirals to a river-bed. Vera Nugent standing there, her chin upon her hands, her hands upon her staff, could see straight below her feet two absorbed couples, as it were on different grades of the scene. In the first the fair Margery Dacre leaned against a rock while Lingen, on his knees, tied her shoestring; at a lower level yet Macartney, having handed his Lucy over a torrent, stooped his head to receive his tribute. Vera, who had a grain of pity in her, hoped that Urquhart had been spared; but whether he was or not she never knew. No signs of disturbance were upon him at the ensuing picnic, unless his treatment of Macartney—with a kind of humorous savagery—betrayed him. They talked of the Folgefond, that mighty snow-field beyond the fiord which the three men intended to traverse in a day or two's time.