“Archie” asked nothing better; and in another moment—for he had a great gift of chatter—he was talking to Miss Derwent in his most charming manner, Blanche listening quietly, with a slight suspicion of condescension in her tone, which greatly amused the young man. For, after all, he was not so young as he looked. It set him on his mettle, however, and made him feel it a positive triumph when he succeeded in drawing out a smile of amusement, which lighted up her blue eyes into new beauty.
All this time—though, in reality, no very great stretch of minutes had passed since the mother and daughter first entered the room—Stasy was waiting in the fly outside. But, after a while, the distractions of wondering how her mother and Blanche were “getting on;” of listening to the observations which the driver from time to time addressed in a sleepy voice to his horse, while he lazily tickled its ears with the end of his whip; or of peering in as far as she could see, in hopes of a gleam of primroses among the thick growing shrubs at one side of the house, began to pall upon her. And the tantalising possibility of the primroses so near at hand carried the day.
Out of the carriage stepped Miss Stasy.
“If any one should meet me, or if mamma and Blanche were vexed, I could say I was getting too cold sitting still, which would be perfectly true,” she said to herself.
There was no getting in among the shrubs and trees from the immediate front; but the yellow specks were more clearly visible, and Stasy was not a girl to be easily baffled when she had got a thing in her head. So she made her way round by a side path skirting the house at some little distance, saying to the driver as she passed him, that if the ladies came out, he was to say she would be back immediately. The path was somewhat deceptive; it led her further than she knew, till she suddenly came out on a broader one bearing away towards another drive some way off at the back of the house, ending in a small lodge on the road to Crossburn.
A sort of curiosity led Stasy on.
“I’ll look for primroses as I go back,” she said. “I do like finding out about places. I wonder if this way would take us back to Pinnerton across the fields somehow.”
Everything was perfectly still. She stood some little way up the drive, looking towards the gate, and wishing she dared venture as far as the road without risk of keeping her mother and Blanche waiting. The ground was dry and crisp; last year’s leaves were still lying thickly; and at the other side of the drive a small fir-wood was attractively tempting.
“I wish our woods at Pinnerton were more firs than all mixed kinds of trees as they are,” thought Stasy. “I do love cones so, and the pricks make such a nice crackle when you walk on them. We used to get tired of the fir-woods at Arcachon, I remember. I think there is something fresher about them in England.”
And with a sigh at having to cut short the delights of her exploration, she was turning to retrace her steps, when a sound fell on her ears which made her stop short.