"What a wonderful place!"
"It is too old!" cried Elizabeth, petulantly; then with a touch of repentance--"Yet of course we love it. We are not so stifled here as you would be."
He smiled and did not reply.
"Confess you have been stifled--ever since you came to England."
He drew a long breath, throwing back his head with a gesture which made Elizabeth smile. He smiled in return.
"It was you who warned me how small it would all seem. Such little fields--such little rivers--such tiny journeys! And these immense towns treading on each other's heels. Don't you feel crowded up?"
"You are home-sick already?"
He laughed--"No, no!" But the gleam in his eyes admitted it. And Elizabeth's heart sank--down and down.
A few more guests arrived for Sunday--a couple of politicians, a journalist, a poet, one or two agreeable women, a young Lord S., who had just succeeded to one of the oldest of English marquisates, and so on.