She paused for breath.
Barrimore glanced over her head towards the drawing-room windows, and saw Colonel Lane and Uncle Robert making their way along the terrace to join his mother. She—simple soul that she was—had been watching the young people on the lawn furtively. Hopes were rising. Her Philip was so young to have his heart buried with Eweretta in Canada.
“We must go in now,” said Barrimore. “Your father and my uncle are gone to the drawing-room.”
Uncle Robert’s voice reached them where they stood.
“Ah, yes, Colonel, as Granville says:
“Oh, Love! thou bane of the most generous souls, Thou doubtful pleasure, and thou certain pain.”
And Barrimore thought his uncle’s quotation singularly appropriate.
CHAPTER III
AN ALARMING SUGGESTION
The quotation Uncle Robert made, and which was overheard by Philip in the garden, was a wind-up to a conversation relative to Phyllis and Captain Arbuthnot.
Colonel Lane had been confiding in Mr. Burns, and perhaps it would be as well to give the gist of their conversation, as it bears upon the disclosures of the foregoing chapter.