"I'll go and breakfast with the old gentleman again," he thinks. "After all it's only the proper thing to call and inquire for his health. Of course Reine will not have come in from her walk yet."
In this he deceives himself. Reine is there by the side of the old man's couch, with a lapful of rosy-tinted shells which she is displaying with a good deal of childish pleasure in their acquisition.
"Sir George found this one; isn't it a beauty?" she is saying, vivaciously, as the door opens, and Mr. Charteris is ushered in.
A start, a blush, a dimpling smile. She rises, gathering her treasures, child-like, in her apron overskirt.
Mr. Charteris, vouchsafing her a careless nod, passes on to Mr. Langton.
"I hope I find you better this morning, and rested?" he observes, taking the chair Reine places, without seeming to see her.
"A trifle easier, yes," Mr. Langton responds, with more than ordinary graciousness, and then Vane steals a furtive glance at Reine.
Some of the brightness that came into her face at his entrance has faded from it. She has quietly seated herself again, her long lashes droop to the shells in her lap, which she fingers rather at random.
"So the baronet helped you gather shells," he remarks, condescendingly.