As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness, all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her disconcerted.
The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming down the walk.
He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.
He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his tact.
He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through with Philippa before breakfast.
But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.
"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"
It was Straker who was disconcerted now.
"What have I done with him?"
"Yes. Where is he?"