"Of course."
"I thought it was, sir, but they told me only to say Miss Oliphant."
"Oh, that was their little surprise for me," I replied. "Very well, Mrs Moxon. Lunch, and I'll ask them to stay for the week-end. My sister left a few things, didn't she?"
"That'll be all right, sir. I'll see to Miss Oliphant."
I came out of the house again and sought the lake. They were out in the middle of it, lying down in the punt together with their heads over the side. They were watching the trout. I was on the point of hailing them when I refrained. Something dramatic in their juxtaposition pulled me up short.
Their heads were together, their laughter came across the water. She was having her summer again. But what would it cost her? Her unchanging adoration—and his affectionate indifference! He had never cared, he never would care. To-morrow he would have forgotten all about it. But she would have still another day's memories to add to those others when he had jumped five-barred gates with his pipe in his mouth and his stick in his hand—memories of my punt and pond and the greening oaks and the silvery willows.... Yet she was laughing as carelessly as he. They were playing a game. A willow-leaf had floated like a fairy shallop towards them, and he was blowing it her way, she blowing it back again.
Then a dragonfly caught their attention, and they forgot the willow-leaf, as instantly as children forget.
At lunch I sat with my back to the open windows, they where they could look out. Apparently he had completely forgotten that night, only three days ago, when he had told me that I was the only one of his old acquaintances to whom he dared reveal himself. He called her Julia, she him Derry, and to both of them I was George. We laughed, joked, said anything that came into our heads; but beneath it all I was in an extreme of curiosity. How had they come together? What had happened that there was now a second person in the world to whom he could pronounce his name?
Half-way through lunch I made my proposal that they should remain for a couple of days. His brow suddenly clouded. I watched him carefully, and I knew that Julia was watching him as carefully as I.