"Is Mr. Farley an actor?" Hannah asked.
"Dawson, that ought to take it out of you!" Mrs. Lakeman laughed. "There's one place in the world, at any rate, where they haven't heard of you." And then turning to Hannah, she said, impressively, "He is the greatest romantic actor in England, Miss Barton."
"It's a thing I am not likely to have heard," Hannah answered. "I have never entered a theatre, or wished to enter one."
Lena made a little sound of sympathy. "I always like the Puritans," she said. "They were so self-denying."
"I'm a very wicked person, perhaps," Dawson Farley said, with pleasant cynicism, that almost won Hannah in spite of herself. "But all the same, won't you show us your garden, Miss Barton?" It seemed to him sheer insanity to come to the country and stay in-doors.
"I wish you young people would all go to the garden. I want to talk to this dear woman alone, and we have only a quarter of an hour to stay," Mrs. Lakeman said.
"You'll take a cup of tea?" Mrs. Vincent asked, for it always seemed to her that a visit was a poor thing unless it included refreshment.
"No, thank you; we must get back. And now tell me," she went on, when they were alone, "what does Gerald say about Cyril? He sent me a little note when he arrived, but he hadn't seen him then." The note was merely an acknowledgment of a sentimental farewell one she had sent him, but Mrs. Lakeman did not think it necessary to mention this.
"He sent you a note—from Australia?" Mrs. Vincent asked, wonderingly.
"Of course he did." She put her hand on Mrs. Vincent's. "You know what he and I were to each other once?"