“Were you?”
“My wife will have told you that we hope, unless you have any objection to the plan, to take you back to Stillington with us to-morrow, and I have come to ask you if the 8.50 from Paddington would be too early for you.”
He had got the right key, hospitable and courteous, erring perhaps a little on the side of excess in the way of formality, but that was a fault on the safe side.
Before he spoke, Bonnybell had known that he had not yet heard, and that it would be her task to tell him. She saw also, with a slight tinge of bitter amusement, his anxiety not to let their point of departure for the long ordeal ahead of them be one of too great intimacy. (“Reassure yourself, my poor Edward; you may set your mind at rest.”)
The lack of her usual civil promptness in acknowledging a courtesy caused him a slight surprise, but it was so far not coupled with any misgiving. It did not need any of that self-esteem in which Edward was so singularly lacking to feel sure that his hearer could have no alternative plan which she would think preferable to the one now offered her, so he added, still with that soupçon of formality—
“I ought to apologize for suggesting such an unreasonable hour.”
Consciousness of his endeavour to keep her at arm’s length gave her the strength to show him the needlessness of his precautions, though her mode of opening the subject was misleading.
“You always thought me rather a sluggard,” she said softly; “do you remember?”
But no “do you remembers” were to enter into his programme, and though more against the grain than he liked to own, he cut this one short.
“I never could understand why there is a virtue per se in getting up early.”