"N-not lately."
"Well, his avuncular advice would probably coincide with mine if he were here. All men are like peas, and most women, when it comes to the Year-after-the-Wedding. Even Tristran and Iseult would have pretty surely grown fat at forty when the children were growing poetical. At forty everyone grows either fat or thin and begins to mistrust moonlight for reading the Book of Life by. In Cliff Mainwaring—I used to know him in his college days—you will have a husband who will never set the Thames alight, nor need to. And you'll live very peaceable in consequence. I shall expect to be asked to stay with you."
And that was what Margery thought about it.
CHAPTER VI
"I have surprising news for you," wrote Mrs. Carmichael, "Cyprian is at Home! His Company has sent him to attend some Conference in connection with the mines. I have not seen him myself. He called when I was out and of course Peter is away at Wimbledon seeing your father's cousin about that clerkship. Cyprian left a note to say he had been lent a flat by a friend. One of those self-contained affairs in Jermyn Street. Service-flats, I think they are called, with the kind of lift which always terrifies me that you are supposed to work yourself by pressing buttons and not a hall-porter. I should not dream of going there unless Peter were with me and, as likely as not, poor Peter would forget which buttons these days, himself, and shoot us into the wrong flat when it would be most awkward to explain.
"Cyprian said he should be in all Sunday if any of us cared to ring him up. You had better write and tell him that I shall be at Richmond this weekend myself, seeing your father in the Home. I suppose you will be returning on Monday and can arrange to meet him then and relate our distressing news."
For a wonder, Mrs. Carmichael did not forget to add Cyprian's full address. Followed the plaintive reminder that Lord Clifford had asked to be allowed to take Ferlie to a matinée on Monday; that the poor fellow was looking very pulled down and she was quite certain that if Ferlie put off Cyprian till Tuesday he would quite understand. P.S.—"My new georgette was ruined by that horrid little dog of the Glennies' which cost a hundred guineas. I would not pay that to have my carpet and my friends' dresses spoilt, and I don't believe it, though Lady Cardew tells me it is a fact, but she is never very lucid in these matters."
The strong point of this letter, also, being anything but its lucidity, Ferlie did not waste time considering which of the canine commandments framed for drawing-rooms had been violated at her mother's expense. Three words, only, hammered at her brain: "Cyprian is Home."
(1) That explained his silence of the past weeks.