"How simply perfect!" laughed Virgie as she helped herself to marmalade with an appetite which was so recent an acquirement that she herself could not understand it. Nobody present noticed it. Mrs. Mynors would never have known had her daughter starved herself to death under her eyes. Across the girl's mind stole the thought of some one who had watched every mouthful, had hectored and bullied her into eating.
She leant across to Gerald, and perused the map with attention. "What a way it seems! Bodiam is in the very eastest corner of Sussex. And Bignor is more than the whole way back—positively on the other side of Worthing! Are you sure it won't be too far? I am so afraid Pansy will miss me."
"You forget," put in her mother, "Pansy is going to have the first of her electric baths to-day, and nurse says she will have to be very quiet for some hours after it. Besides, it will accustom her to the idea of being without you."
"Yes. That is true," was the reply, while a shadow crept over the gladness of the face.
"I expect Osbert is beginning to be restive, isn't he?" asked her mother, in order to gauge the effect of a sudden reference to Gaunt.
The effect, as always, was a momentary confusion, slight but evident. She soon rallied. "He is very patient," she replied, while her thoughts went obstinately back to the dream garden, veiled in mist, to the man who approached her, groping blindly, to his words, "Are you coming back? No!"
"It seems wonderful that he can be patient under the circumstances," observed Gerald drily. He did not pursue the subject. He was folding up his map. "I told the chauffeur to be round in exactly twenty minutes from now. I must bolt, and do a change. Can you be ready in twenty minutes?"
She eagerly assented, and he caught up his hat and ran out of the room, with a smile to her of glowing, eager anticipation which set her heart dancing in response. What a dear fellow he was! How good he had been to them all! He had saved quite a lot of Gaunt's money by taking them down to Worthing in the car. She did not ask herself why it was terrible to take her husband's money, but easy to take Gerald's.
She ran away upstairs, calling to Tony. He appeared from his room, got up in a striped flannel suit, a soft linen collar, a most recherché tie, and a Panama hat—a real one.
"Why, Tony, you have made yourself a swell!" cried the girl.