“Here we are, you see!” Tarlyon cried; and the grin was all over his face, a gay, mocking grin.
“Well, I’m very pleased,” Ivor met him in the middle of the room. They were of a height, dark and fair, but Tarlyon was much the stronger set of the two. His extraordinarily fair hair was crisply curly from his wide, reddish forehead; he looked clean and scrubbed and weathered—always as though the salt of the sea had just whipped his face. And so gay, with that attractive smile that never left the slightly frozen blue eyes....
Virginia vaguely introduced the two men. And she examined her husband, rather severely.
“This is very odd, I do think,” she said.
Lord Tarlyon turned very frankly to Ivor, appealing to him:—
“I say, you know, I’m awfully sorry to have rushed in on you like this. But, don’t you see——”
“Will you have a drink?” asked Ivor.
“Certainly. Used to hear about you, you know, from a man in my mess called Transome. Thought no end of you, he did. I was sorry he went....” He turned to Virginia, still appealing: “What I mean to say is, my dear, that I knew you’d be grateful for a lift home in the car, so I brought the blessed thing along....” He took the glass from Ivor. “Damned good husband I am, I do think,” he teased Virginia. Splendid he was, standing there by the table between the two, simply glowing with the pleasure of the moment, laughing at them, teasing Virginia with that sideways little grin under his fair, clipped moustache. He mocked Virginia. He toasted Virginia....
“Yes, but how did you find out I was here?” Virginia asked. “For I left no word as to where I would be, and my footprints are too small to be visible to the human eye....”
“Easy, my dear, dead easy! On your not turning up for dinner, with every excuse, I must say”—he bowed to Ivor—“Kare put inquiries through the butler to the servants’ hall to find out whether anything had been heard of any dark, handsome strangers of superior mentality in the neighbourhood. On the name Marlay being mentioned we all naturally stood to attention at once. That’s our man, we cried with one voice. Anyway, I cried and they echoed. And so here I am! Easy, Virginia, dead easy!”