“A little inertness, Geoffry, nothing more. About Christmas?” continued Lady Chavasse. “Shall you be well enough to go to the Derrestons’, do you think?”
“I think we had better let Christmas draw nearer before laying out any plans for it,” he answered.
“Yes, that’s all very well: but I am going to write to Lady Derreston to-day, and she will expect me to mention it. Shall you like to go?”
A moment’s pause, and then he turned to her: his clear, dark-blue eyes, ever kind and gentle, looking straight into hers; his voice low and tender.
“I do not suppose I shall ever go away from the Grange again.”
She turned quite white. Was it coming so near as that? A kind of terror took possession of her.
“Geoffry! Geoffry!”
“My darling mother, I will stay with you if I can; you know that. But the fiat does not lie with you or with me.”
Sir Geoffry went behind her chair, and put his arms round her playfully, kissing her with a strange tenderness of heart that he sought to hide.
“It may be all well yet, mother. Don’t let it trouble you before the time.”