“Abroad, and England! That’s all the address we are vouchsafed. Mrs Fane and Miss Wastneys evidently wish to shake off the dust of this village as soon as they drive away from ‘Pastimes’. Even if we wish to communicate with them, we shall not be able to do it.”
“Oh, yes, Delphine, you will,” I contradicted. “I have told you that letters will always reach us through our lawyers.”
“Lawyers!” she repeated eloquently. “As if one could send ordinary letters in a roundabout way like that! I wouldn’t dare to write through a lawyer, unless it were a matter of life and death. I must say, Evelyn, you are queer! When we have got to know each other so well, too!”
“You thought it ‘queer’ that Charmion and I should live here together; and now you think it ‘queer’ when we go away. Isn’t that a little unreasonable?”
“It is ‘queer’ to be so mysterious about where you are going. People ordinarily—”
“Very well, then! We are not ordinary. Let us leave it at that. It is much more interesting to be mysterious. Perhaps we are really two authors of world-wide fame, who but ourselves in the country for a short rest now and then between our dazzling spells of industry.”
Delphine gaped, hesitated, then laughed complacently.
“Oh, well, Mrs Fane is the sort of person who might be anything. But not you, Evelyn; certainly not you! You are not—”
“What?”
“Clever enough!” she cried bluntly. The next minute, with one of the swift, child-like impulses which made her so lovable, she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me vehemently. “But you are good—good and kind. That’s better than all the cleverness. Forgive me, Evelyn; I’m a rude, bad-tempered thing. Kiss and be friends!”