“I daresay mamma won’t come down for a minute or two,” Stasy continued. “She told me just now that she had two or three letters that she must finish for the post.”
Mr Dunstan looked rather guilty.
“I do hope she will not hurry on my account,” he said. “I am in no hurry, but I do want to see Mrs Derwent. I have a”—and he hesitated—“a message for her from an old friend. At least I promised to give her news of him the first time I saw her.”
“Indeed,” said Blanche, who, if she felt curious as to who the old friend might be, for her own reasons repressed her curiosity.
But Stasy was less self-contained.
“An old friend,” she repeated eagerly. “How interesting! I wonder who it was. Do tell us, Mr Dunstan.”
Archie was by no means reluctant to do so. Anything to get out of the stilted commonplace-isms which had begun the conversation.
“It is no one you know personally,” he said, turning rather pointedly to Stasy; “though you have probably heard of him, as he was your grandfathers greatest friend—I mean old Sir Adam Nigel.”
Stasy almost clapped her hands.
“Oh, how glad I am,” she exclaimed, “and how delighted mamma will be! She has been longing to hear of him again. Is he in England? He was to have come in the spring.”