“I live there.”
“Do you? Then I expect you know my friends, the Mertons, at the Hall.”
“M’yes.”
“Ah! very likely we shall meet, then; I believe I am to stay there as soon as I get my next leave.”
“No, I don’t suppose we shall,” Bernard answered. “We hardly know them; only on sufferance. They’re a cut above us.”
“I see.”
The tone was neutral, it was too dark to read faces, and the stranger said no more. In a minute he was calling upon Bernard to help him set the motor on its wheels again, and together they dragged it down into the road, Bernard doing most of the work, for the stranger’s strength was frail, like his physique.
“You’re not fit to go on,” were Bernard’s last words, as the stranger settled uneasily into his seat, with a tender consideration for all his bruises and cuts. But he got no answer save a smile and a wave of the hand. He waited till the car was out of sight, and then fetched Vronsky out of the field and drove home without further incident.
He found Dolly waiting in the warm, dark parlor, reading by firelight, her feet on the marble rim of the hearth, her face close to the flames, which glowed and reddened the ceiling and flickered in gold on her hair. She raised a flushed face from her book: an intent reader was Dolly.
“Where have you been? You’re late.”