Again Mr Cheviott’s face flushed.
“You are a foolish child,” he said, under his breath. Whether Mary caught the words or not he could not tell, but in a gentler tone she added, as she was passing through the door-way, “I think, however, I should tell you that no one—my sister, of course not—no one knows of my coming here to-day.”
Mr Cheviott bowed.
“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with what Mary imagined to be extreme irony.
He crossed the hall with her, and opened the large door himself. But Mary did not look at him as she passed out. And, when she had got some way down the carriage-drive in sight of the dump of oak trees, she burst into a flood of bitter tears. Tears that Mr Cheviott suspected, though he did not see them.
“Poor child,” he said, as he returned to his study, “I trust she will meet no one in the park. Those gossiping servants—Well, surely I can never have a more wretched piece of work to go through than this! What a mean, despicable snob she thinks me!” he laughed, bitterly. “Why, I wonder, is it the fate of some people to be constantly doing other people’s dirty work? I have had my share of it, Heaven knows; but I think I am growing quite reckless to what people think of me. What eyes that child has—and how she must love that sister of hers! If it had been she that Arthur had made a fool of himself about—”