“She’ll be knitting—just as the king left her.”
“Admirable!”
She rose suddenly, wearied of this banter, flung her sewing aside and ran from the room.
When she came down to luncheon her mood was high. She led the talk into many channels, but dwelt chiefly upon matters remote and unrelated. His being there, he was well aware, was something that the servants would not overlook any more than Mrs. Craighill’s detention—when all had known of the projected journey—would pass unremarked by the shrewd eyes of the back stairs. A sense of this scrutiny, and of their being there together, gave zest to the propinquity of the luncheon table. It was an addendum to the supper they had eaten together on the night Colonel Craighill sought seclusion for the writing of his speech; it had the same quality of a clandestine pleasure, but with the element of fear eliminated. Wayne did not question that she had counted on his coming, any more than he doubted the impulse that had led him home at this unusual hour. His senses tingled with the delight of facing her thus at the table. She poured the tea with which, she said, she always cheered herself at noon. He met her eyes at intervals, eager for the smile that rose, beyond question, from a happy heart.
In the library, where he followed her, she continued to talk gaily while he smoked.
“Well,” she said after half an hour, “don’t let me keep you. It must be time for you to go back; though I suppose you stay at the Club all afternoon when you lunch there.”
“I don’t hear the call of business shouting very loud.”
“Oh, of course you must go back; it would never do for you to stay here! That would make it necessary for me to go away—to Fanny’s—or anywhere.”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t sit here and talk all afternoon if we want to. We are at home here; we can do as we like.”
“Oh, no, we can’t. That is exactly what we can’t do.”