“You needn’t. I’ve got eyes in my head. It’s that gentleman you met in France.”
Connie swung herself round and laid violent hands on Annette’s knitting.
“You shan’t knit. Look at me! You can’t say he’s not good-looking?”
“Which he knows—a deal sight more than is good for him,” said Annette, setting her mouth a little grimly.
“Everybody knows when they’re good-looking, you dear silly! Of course, he’s most suitable—dreadfully so. And I can’t make up my mind whether I care for him a bit!”
She folded her arms in front of her, her little chin fell forward on her white wrappings, and she stared rather sombrely into vacancy.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Annette after a pause—adopting a tone in which she might have discussed a new hat.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Connie dreamily.
She was thinking of Falloden’s sudden departure from Oxford, after his own proposal of two more rides. His note, “crying off” till after the schools, had seemed to her not quite as regretful as it might have been; his epistolary style lacked charm. And it was impertinent of him to suggest Lord Meyrick as a substitute. She had given the Lathom Woods a wide berth ever since her first adventure there; and she hoped that Lord Meyrick had spent some disappointed hours in those mossy rides.
All the same it looked as though she were going to see a good deal of Douglas Falloden. She raised her eyes suddenly.