"I can't think why you've stopped so long. Every morning since you came I've been expecting you to go. I thought you'd say your father was dying, or that your partner was ill, and you had urgent business in town. It's what they all do. Do you know, we've asked no end of people down, and they never stay more than three days. They always get letters or telegrams, or something. No, I'm wrong; one man stopped a week. He sprained his ankle the first day, and left before he was fit to travel."
(Durant laughed. She really amused him, this ingénue of thirty, with the face of a Sphinx and the conversation of a child.)
"And they never come again. There's something about the place they can not stand."
They were walking leisurely together in full sight of Coton Manor. She gazed at it anxiously.
"Does it—does it look so very awful?"
"Well—architecturally speaking—no, of course it doesn't."
"Ah, you're getting used to it. Do you know you'll have been here a fortnight next Monday?"
About the corners of her mouth and eyes there played a dawning humor.
"Come, that sounds as if you did want me to go."
"No it doesn't. How could it? If you don't believe me, here's the proof—you can ride Polly every day if you'll stop another week."