"That makes it sadder," said the girl.
"I should think it did," Kendal replied; and then their eyes met, and they laughed the healthy instinctive laugh of youth when it is asked to mourn fatuously, which is always a little cruel.
"I hope," said Elfrida quickly, "that he has not saddled you with a title. An estate is bad enough, but with a title added it would ruin you. You would never do any more good work, I am sure—sure. People would get at you—you would take to rearing farm creatures from a sense of duty—you might go into Parliament. Tell me there is no title!"
"How do you know all that?" Kendal exclaimed, laughing.
"But there is no title—never has been."
Elfrida drew a long sigh of relief, and held him with her eyes as if he had just been snatched away from, some impending danger. "So now you are—what do you say in this country?—a landed proprietor. You belong to the country gentry. In America I used to read about the country gentry in London Society—all the contributors and all the subscribers to London Society used to be country gentry, I believe, from what I remember. They were always riding to hounds, and having big Christmas parties, and telling ghost stories about the family, diamonds."
"All very proper," Kendal protested against the irony of her tone.
"Oh, if one would be quite sure that it will not make any difference," Elfrida went on, clasping her knee with her shapely gloved hands. "I should like—I should like to beg you to make me a promise that you will never give up your work—your splendid work!" She hesitated, and looked at him almost with supplication. "But then why should you make such a promise to me!"
They were sitting opposite one another in the dusty confusion of the room, and when she said this Kendal got up and walked over to her, without knowing exactly why.
"If I made such a promise," he said, looking down at her, "it would be more binding given to you than to anybody else—more binding and more sacred."
If she had exacted it he would have promised then and there, and he had some vague notion of sealing the vow with his lips upon her hand, and of arranging—this was more indefinite still—that she should always insist, in her sweet personal way, upon its fulfilment. But Elfrida felt the intensity in his voice with a kind of fear, not of the situation—she had a nervous delight in the situation—but of herself. She had a sudden terror in his coming so close to her, in his changed voice, and its sharpness lay in her recognition of it. Why should she be frightened? She jumped up gaily with the question still throbbing in her throat.