"Well, you were always on excellent terms," he said, in answer to her last remark. "I remember his saying to me once that you were very good company. The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you."
When Mary and her father were together, "the Bishop" was Sir Richard's property. He only fell to Mary's share in the old man's absence.
Mary colored slightly.
"Oh yes, we got on," she said, counting her letters the while with a quick hand.
"Well, I hope that young woman whom he did marry is now behaving herself. It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year, wasn't it?"
"There was a good deal of talk," said Mary.
"A rum fellow, that Cliffe! A man at the club told me last week it is believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months. Shocking bad form I call it. If the Turks catch him, they'll string him up. And quite right, too. What's he got to do with other people's quarrels?"
"If the Turks will be such brutes—"
"Nonsense, my dear! Don't you believe any of this radical stuff. The Turks are awfully fine fellows—fight like bull-dogs. And as for the 'atrocities,' they make them up in London. Oh, of course, what Cliffe wants is notoriety—we all know that. Well, I'm going out to see if I can find another English paper. Beastly climate!"
But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child's impertinence. He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness cape, took hat and stick, and departed.