"You are much better, are you not, Adela?"
"Oh, I am very well," was the languid answer.
"Do you like Scotland?"
"I don't know."
Grace thought she was tired after the night journey, and resolved to leave her to silence; but an interruption occurred. Frances came in.
And, that Frances Chenevix could be melancholy for more than a minute at any time, was not to be expected. In spite of Adela's evidently subdued state of mind, she, after a few staid sentences, ran off at a gay tangent.
"What do you think, Grace?" she began. "We had very nearly lost our party tonight—one, Adela, that your whilom husband gives. He and his sister have been telegraphed for this afternoon to Netherleigh. Poor Mrs. Dalrymple has met with some serious accident; there has been an operation, and the result is, I suppose, uncertain. They have both started by train, and therefore cannot be at home to receive the people tonight."
"Is the party put off, then?" questioned Grace.
"No, there was not time to do it: how could he send round to all the world and his wife? It is to take place without him, mamma playing host in his absence."
"I wonder what Mrs. Dalrymple could want with him?"